Illumina’s Alliance for Genomic Discovery expanded its roster of industry partners, adding companies such as Alnylam and drawing interest from pharma teams seeking diverse genomes paired with structured clinical data. The consortium has sequenced over 250,000 genomes from the VUMC BioVU biobank and plans an incremental addition of 30,000 samples. Lead sentence: Illumina’s vertically integrated genomic offering—spanning sample prep to analytics—attracted pharmaceutical collaborators who view population‑scale, phenotype‑linked genomes as a resource for target discovery, real‑world evidence and translational research. Alnylam cited the dataset’s power to illuminate human genetic variation relevant to nucleic-acid therapeutics. The partnership underscores big‑data strategies in target de‑risking and drug‑development planning; companies will use the dataset for target validation, epidemiologic queries and potential biomarker discovery. Observers noted Illumina is also showcasing multiomics and proteomics extensions to demonstrate end‑to‑end capabilities to prospective customers.