When Roche yesterday announced its $5.7 billion hostile takeover bid for Illumina, reactions on Twitter were varied and swift, ranging from the humorous — like Stuart Glenn's depiction of what a potential acquisition might be like — to the concerned — "If Roche plans to do to DNA sequencing what it did to PCR, then a lot of genomicists are going to need second jobs," Misha Angrist says — to the optimistic — "More evidence that big pharma is getting ready for personalised med?" James Gazzard asks of the potential deal. Dan Vorhaus summarizes the news simply, tweeting that the "message coming out of Roche seems heavily focused on Dx [diagnostics] development [and] access, not so much technology development."
As our sister publication GenomeWeb Daily News reports, Illumina's board of directors has responded to Roche's bid by adopting a poison pill provision. According to GWDN, Illumina made this move in order to deter what it called "coercive and otherwise unfair takeover tactics" on the part of Roche.
In response to this most recent news, Peter Roberts tweets: "Interesting to see [how] this fight is developing!"