QIAGEN and SOPHiA GENETICS Forge Partnership to Combine Strengths in Next-Generation Sequencing

Original from: businesswire

QIAGEN N.V. announced the launch of the new QIAseq Platform Partnership program and the first partnership with medical data-analysis provider SOPHiA GENETICS that will bring together its QIAseq reagent technology for next-generation sequencing (NGS) with the SOPHiA DDMTM digital analytics platform.

Building on its own offering integrated with QIAGEN Digital Insights, the bioinformatics business of QIAGEN, the QIAseq Platform Partnership program aims to enhance the utilization and compatibility of its best-selling NGS kits to support secondary analysis and tertiary interpretation workflows offered by other digital data-sharing and analytics companies. These kits are designed for use with any sequencer. The goal is to provide research customers even wider access to the fast-growing area of precision diagnostics that is producing new insights in genetics.

As a first step in the new Platform Partnership program, customers can now order QIAseq panels combined with SOPHiA DDM a cloud-based platform that analyzes data from various sources to enable entirely new research perspectives. The partnership will initially support somatic variant detection (an alteration in DNA that occurs after birth) using QIAseq Targeted DNA Pro panels for homologous recombination repair (HRR), a special type of biomarker test to find tumors that have certain mutations that may make them sensitive to PARP inhibitors.

The partnership with SOPHiA GENETICS is planned to be expanded to other areas of analysis, including the use of QIAseq panels custom-made solutions.

“Our Platform Partnership Program will enable more customers to benefit from the high quality of the QIAGEN NGS preparation kits through the use of a wider range of analytics solutions to address their unique analysis and interpretation needs,” said Thomas Schweins, Senior Vice President of the Life Sciences Business Area at QIAGEN. “SOPHiA GENETICS is our first partner thanks to their unique expertise and reputation. We look forward to offering our customers a leading combination and expanding our collaboration.”

“SOPHiA’s mission is to democratize data-driven medicine. To get there, we are partnering with reagent manufacturers so that our deep expertise in genomic analysis complements their solutions,” said Kevin Puylaert, Vice President Business Development at SOPHiA GENETICS. “We have a strong and longstanding relationship with QIAGEN and have used their products as part of our ‘bundle solution’ for years. QIAGEN’s amplicon-targeted NGS technology has an outstanding reputation to be among the best. We are taking full advantage of the performance of both solutions in this collaboration and are very optimistic about the positive impact on medicine and research.”

The applications of SOPHiA DDM are planned to be expanded to eventually support a wide range of applications using QIAGEN kits. The goal is to allow customers to use SOPHiA’s Set-Up Program, an efficient and reliable process that establishes and demonstrates the analytical performance of any test prior to it being carried out. This will enable customers to better and more efficiently design new workflows using QIAseq technologies.

Some four million samples have been processed by QIAGEN’s growing range of NGS panels. With leading products like QIAseq Targeted DNA Pro and QIAseq Pan-cancer Multimodal panels, QIAGEN has built a portfolio of universal NGS solutions that have enabled customers to test for somatic cancer variants, tumor mutational burden, minimal residual disease, and now with this partnership homologous recombination repair deficiency.

Disclaimer: Unless specified otherwise, SOPHiA GENETICS products are for research use only (RUO) and not for use in diagnostic procedures. QIAseq Targeted DNA Panels are intended for molecular biology applications. These products are not intended for the clinical diagnosis, prevention or treatment of any disease.

About SOPHiA GENETICS

SOPHiA GENETICS (Nasdaq: SOPH) is a software company dedicated to establishing data-driven medicine as the standard for medical care and life-sciences research. It is the creator of the SOPHiA DDM™ Platform, a cloud-native platform capable of analyzing data and generating insights from complex multimodal data sets and different diagnostic modalities. The SOPHiA DDM™ Platform and related solutions, products and services are currently used by a broad network of hospital, laboratory, and biopharma institutions.

About QIAGEN

QIAGEN N.V., a Netherlands-based holding company, is the leading global provider of Sample to Insight solutions that enable customers to gain valuable molecular insights from samples containing the building blocks of life. Our sample technologies isolate and process DNA, RNA and proteins from blood, tissue and other materials. Assay technologies make these biomolecules visible and ready for analysis. Bioinformatics software and knowledge bases interpret data to report relevant, actionable insights. Automation solutions tie these together in seamless and cost-effective workflows. QIAGEN provides solutions to more than 500,000 customers around the world in Molecular Diagnostics (human healthcare), Applied Testing (primarily forensics), Pharma (pharma and biotech companies) and Academia (life sciences research). As of December 31, 2022, QIAGEN employed approximately 6,200 people in over 35 locations worldwide.

Source: QIAGEN and SOPHiA GENETICS Forge Partnership to Combine Strengths in Next-Generation Sequencing