Abbott has announced a $21 billion deal to acquire Exact Sciences, which could accelerate early cancer detection, expand at-home testing, and reshape the diagnostics landscape globally.
Abbott announced on Nov. 20 that it has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Exact Sciences, a move that would expand its presence in the rapidly growing cancer diagnostics market and potentially reach millions more patients. The deal values Exact Sciences at around $21 billion, with shareholders set to receive $105 per share.
If approved, the acquisition would give Abbott control of one of the most influential diagnostics portfolios in the industry, including Cologuard, Oncotype DX, and a growing lineup of liquid biopsy technologies aimed at earlier cancer detection and more precise treatment guidance. The transaction positions Abbott as a key player in the $60 billion U.S. cancer screening and precision oncology market, one of the fastest-growing sectors in healthcare.
The combination of Abbott’s scale with Exact’s oncology innovations underscores a broader shift in the clinical diagnostics market: prevention, early detection, and home-based testing are rapidly evolving from niche innovation strategies into mainstream commercial imperatives. That is a development that clinical lab professionals and pathologists must watch given Abbott’s interest.
The acquisition is expected to be immediately accretive to Abbott’s revenue growth and gross margins, with Exact projected to generate more than $3 billion in revenue this year and sustain high-teens organic growth.
Abbott Chairman and CEO Robert B. Ford noted, “Exact Sciences’ innovation, its strong brand and customer-focused execution are unrivaled,” Ford said. (Photo credit: Abbott)
Exact Sciences CEO Kevin Conroy echoed the sentiment, calling the acquisition an opportunity to expand earlier detection and broaden access worldwide.
Positioning Screening as Part of Primary Care Services
Industry observers agree the deal has vast implications—whether or not it ultimately closes. Consultant and principal at Natel, Eliad Josephson, described in a post on LinkedIn the moment as “a pivotal shift” for the entire ecosystem. “Diagnostics is on fire with Abbott potentially taking over Exact Sciences,” Josephson wrote in a shared analysis.
Josephson highlighted Exact’s strong at-home screening franchise, anchored by Cologuard, and its strategic fit with Abbott’s global reach and deep ties to primary care. Abbott’s footprint in clinics and retail settings could embed cancer screening more deeply into routine visits, transforming the “front door” of care by making early detection more accessible.
“The ability to shift screening into primary care is huge,” Josephson explained.
He added that if Abbott accelerates adoption of Cologuard and next-generation blood-based screening tests, payer coverage and health system integration could move faster than previously expected, reshaping reimbursement and care pathways.
Beyond the U.S., Abbott’s international presence could propel Exact’s products into new markets far more rapidly than the company could manage alone. With cancer incidence rising globally—affecting more than 20 million people each year—expanding access to early detection tools represents both a commercial opportunity and a major public health imperative.
Navigating Cultural and Operational Hurdles
Still, Josephson cautioned that integration will not be straightforward. He pointed to cultural and operational differences between device-centric organizations like Abbott and lab-centric ones like Exact, as well as regulatory timelines and reimbursement uncertainties.
“Will this be easy? No,” he wrote. “Integrating these models is not easy. But regardless if the deal closes, this moment signals where diagnostics is heading.”
Industry stakeholders—from labs and payers to health systems and investors—will need to reassess how they position themselves in a world where cancer detection is increasingly decentralized, data-driven, and integrated into everyday healthcare.
The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2026, pending regulatory and shareholder approvals. If approved, Exact Sciences will operate as an Abbott subsidiary, maintain its Madison, Wisconsin presence, and have CEO Kevin Conroy remain in an advisory role to support the transition.
For now, the industry is watching closely.
As Josephson put it: “Scale matters. Outcomes matter. At-home access matters. Preventive screening is becoming mainstream.”
This article was created with the assistance of Generative AI and has undergone editorial review before publishing.
Ultima Genomics says it is emerging from “stealth mode” with millions in fresh capital and technology capable of sequencing whole human genomes for a fraction of the cost
Investors seem to be optimistic that an emerging genetics company has the proprietary solution to sequence a whole human genome for just $100. If true, this is a development that would be of interest to clinical laboratory managers and pathologists.
The company, Ultima Genomics of Newark, Calif., recently announced that it had raised $600 million from the investment community. In a press release last month, the company announced it has “emerged from stealth mode with a new high-throughput, low-cost sequencing platform that delivers the $100 genome.”
The press release goes on to state that Ultima will unleash a new era in genomics-driven discoveries by developing a “fundamentally new sequencing architecture designed to scale beyond conventional approaches, including completely different approaches to flow cell engineering, sequencing chemistry, and machine learning.”
Are we at the cusp of a revolution in genomics? Ultima Genomics’ founder and CEO, Gilad Almogy, PhD, believes so.
“Our architecture is intended for radical scaling, and the $100 genome is merely the first example of what it can deliver,” he said in the press release. “We are committed to continuously drive down the cost of genomic information until it is routinely used in every part of the healthcare system.”
From an Estimated Cost of $3 Billion to $450 in Just 30 Years!
Whole genome sequencing (WGS) has decreased dramatically in cost since research into the technology required got started in the early 1990s with the publicly-funded Human Genome Project. At that time, the cost to sequence the entire human genome was estimated at around $3 billion. Then, in 1998, John Craig Venter created Celera Genomics (now a subsidiary of Quest Diagnostics) and was the first to sequence the whole human genome (his own) and at a significantly lower cost of around $300 million.
The cost continued to drop as technology improved. In 2001, the cost to sequence the whole human genome hovered around $100 million. Twenty years later that cost had dropped to about $450/sequence, according to data compiled by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
When DNA sequencer Illumina announced in 2014 the arrival of the $1,000 genome, the news was expected to put whole genome sequencing on the road to becoming routine, Forbes reported. But that prediction didn’t pan out.
Ultima Genomics’ $100 price point, however, could be game changing. It would make the cost of decoding a human genome affordable for nearly everyone and accelerate the growth of personalized medicine in clinical laboratory diagnostics.
Applied Physics versus Biological Sciences
According to GEN, Almogy brings a tech background to Ultima—his PhD is in applied physics, not the biological sciences. He founded Ultima in 2016 after serving as founder, president, and CEO at Fulfil Solutions, a manufacturer of custom automation robotics systems. At Ultima, his goal is to “unleash the same relentless scaling in sequencing” that was used to drive down the cost of computing power and transform modern life.
“Ultima is the real deal, with good technology,” Raymond McCauley, cofounder and Chief Architect at BioCurious, and Chair of Digital Biology at Singularity Group, told Singularity Hub. “They’ve been working on an Illumina killer for years.”
“We designed our new sequencing architecture to scale beyond conventional technologies, and are excited to soon make the UG 100, our first instrument using this architecture, commercially available to more customers,” said Gilad Almogy, PhD (above), Ultima Genomics’ founder and CEO, in a press release. “In the future, we aim to continuously improve our technology, further drive down costs, and increase the scale of genomic information to improve patient outcomes.” At $100/sequence, whole genome sequencing may well become commonly available to improve precision medicine diagnostics and clinical laboratory testing. (Photo copyright: Ultima Genomics.)
TechCrunch reported that Ultima’s UG100 sequencing machine and software platform can perform a complete sequencing of a human genome in about 20 hours, with precision comparable to existing options, but does so at a far lower cost per gigabase (Gb), equal to one billion base pairs.
According to the Ultima Genomics website, its breakthroughs include:
An open substrate that creates a massive, low-cost reaction surface that delivers many billions of reads while avoiding costly flow cells and complicated fluidics.
Novel scalable chemistry that combines the speed, efficiency, and read lengths of natural nucleotides with the accuracy and scalability of endpoint detection.
A revolutionary sequencing hardware that uses spinning circular wafers that enable efficient reagent use, zero crosstalk, and ultra-high-speed scanning of large surfaces.
“We may be on the brink of the next revolution in sequencing,” Beth Shapiro, DPhil, an evolutionary molecular biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), told Science. Shapiro is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and an HHMI Investigator at UCSC and Director of Evolutionary Genomics at the UCSC Genomics Institute.
Ultima Genomics maintained a low profile since its founding six years ago. But that changed in May when it announced it had raised $600 million from multiple investors, including:
Affordable Genomics Will Lead to ‘Millions of Tests per Year’
Exact Sciences’ Chairman and CEO Kevin Conroy—whose Wisconsin-based molecular diagnostics company recently entered into a long-term supply agreement for Ultima Genomic’s NGS technologies—believes low-cost genomic sequencing will improve cancer screening and disease monitoring.
“Exact Sciences believes access to differentiated and affordable genomics technologies is critical to providing patients better information before diagnosis and across all stages of cancer treatment,” Conroy said in a press release. “Ultima’s mission to drive down the cost of sequencing and increase the use of genomic information supports our goal to provide accurate and affordable testing options across the cancer continuum. This is particularly important for applications like cancer screening, minimal residual disease, and recurrence monitoring, which could lead to millions of tests per year.”
GEN pointed out that Ultima’s 20-hour turnaround time is fast and its quality on par with its competitors, but that it is Ultima’s $1/Gb price (noted in the preprint) that will set it apart. That cost would be a fraction of Illumina’s NextSeq ($20/Gb) and Element Biosciences’ AVITI ($5/Gb).
Almogy told TechCrunch that Ultima is working with early access partners to publish more proof-of-concept studies showing the capabilities of the sequencing technique, with broader commercial deployment of the technology in 2023. Final pricing is yet to be determined, he said.
If the $100 genome accelerates the pace of medical discoveries and personalized medicine, clinical laboratory scientists and pathologists will be in ideal positions to capitalize on what the executives and investors at Ultima Genomics hope may become a revolution in whole human genome sequencing and genomics.
Filing a complaint with the Louisville division of the District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, Exact Sciences seeks payment from Humana for at least 4,664 Cologuard tests as well as coverage for the procedure in the commercial plans offered in mandate states
Citing more than $800,000 in unpaid service fees and damages, the Exact v Humana lawsuit is the latest example of the on-going struggle between health insurers and clinical laboratories offering proprietary and patent-protected lab procedures.
Exact Sciences Corp. (NASDAQ: EXAS), and Exact Sciences Laboratories, LLC (Exact) allege that Humana (NYSE: HUM) has denied 120 claims in Kentucky worth approximately $70,000 as well as 293 additional claims in other states with coverage mandates worth approximately $169,000.
Exact claims that attempts to appeal denied claims resulted in payment for some services but that more than half remain rejected. They also report roughly 350 claims in which Humana underpaid.
They are seeking full payment for all claims made since the start of 2014 in Kentucky, Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, Illinois, Nevada, and Oklahoma. (more…)
