Qiagen, Hilden, Germany, has entered into an agreement to acquire N-of-One Inc, Redwood City, Calif, a privately-held US molecular decision support company and pioneer in clinical interpretation services for complex genomic data.
Jonathan Sheldon, PhD, Qiagen.
The acquisition of N-of-One will enable Qiagen to significantly expand its decision-support solutions while offering a broader range of software, content, and service-based solutions. It will also enable Qiagen to provide customers with greater access to valuable genomic data assets and service offerings.
N-of-One’s technology-enabled, yet human-driven, services and proprietary MarkerMine database are planned for integration with Qiagen’s Clinical Insight (QCI), enhancing this industry-leading clinical offering with medical interpretation and real-world evidence insights and offering robust decision support in oncology.
The proprietary database, services, and processes of N-of-One produce case-specific reports based on data generated with molecular tests, including next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, and deliver clinical evidence for biomarkers and a list of therapeutic options for consideration. N-of-One also provides patient-specific clinical trial matching services and a somatic cancer database with more than 125,000 anonymized patient samples. This data will be added to the patient samples currently available in QCI, further enhancing Qiagen’s position as provider of the world’s largest genomics knowledge base.
Christine M. Cournoyer, N-of-One.
“N-of-One has made tremendous strides in molecular oncology decision support, and their combination with Qiagen’s own precurated knowledge base of evidence will provide powerful new tools to expand our abilities to deliver patient-specific insights,” says Jonathan Sheldon, PhD, senior vice president of Qiagen’s bioinformatics business area. “We look forward to combining N-of-One’s Precision Insights and Rapid Insights reporting tools, as well as their MarkerMine database, into our QCI portfolio, which is a leading integrated solution for NGS analysis and interpretation. This will further strengthen Qiagen’s leadership in clinical decision support, and provide customers with solutions powered by real-world evidence.”
“We are excited about expanding N-of-One’s impact,” says Christine M. Cournoyer, CEO of N-of-One. “With Qiagen’s resources and reach, our combined technology will provide more patients with greater potential therapeutic strategies.”
Qiagen believes the addition of N-of-One advances its bioinformatics strategy while also providing access to emerging opportunities to support healthcare providers and payers with access to real-world evidence. Key benefits of the acquisition include the following.
- Strong brand recognition. Oncology is the most advanced area for clinical decision support use, and N-of-One is one of the best-known brands in oncology decision support. It is well-established with labs, pharma companies, and payers. The acquisition will complement Qiagen’s leadership in bioinformatics and will benefit the already very rapid growth of QCI.
- Addition of expert-delivered patient data review to QCI. Combining the N-of-One and QCI platforms will create a strong foundation for Qiagen to add a new level of engagement with healthcare professionals, including patient data review services offered by N-of-One and provided by its employees, which together will improve the overall QCI offering for customers.
- Addition of clinical trial data and analyses to QCI. N-of-One has developed capabilities and tools to add insights from clinical trials data to insights derived from literature. This adds an important data layer for healthcare providers to achieve improved test interpretation and decision support, and also for payers to develop evidence frameworks for reimbursement and other protocols for genomic data interpretation.
- Real-world evidence solutions as an attractive growth opportunity. The addition of N-of-One’s MarkerMine database and commercial data rights creates an attractive and expandable link into real-world evidence. Genomic insights and analytics services can be commercialized to pharmaceutical industry partners—in particular to more than 25 companies with which Qiagen has deep companion diagnostic codevelopment relationships—to support patient cohort analytics, patient stratification, trial protocol design, assay design and interpretation, trial accrual and market forecasting, patient-to-trial matching, and other features.
QCI is the leading integrated solution for NGS analysis and interpretation, and the addition of N-of-One will make it even more valuable for labs in analyzing and interpreting NGS data in a broad range of applications. Qiagen recently announced major improvements to this offering that are anchored by applications for oncology and hereditary diseases. Powered by the Qiagen knowledge base, QCI can annotate, interpret, and report NGS variants in the context of over 10 million relevant biomedical findings, while also building the user’s internal experiential knowledge base. The best-in-class workflow minimizes the complexity, time, and cost of determining clinical significance and actionability of NGS variants.
Financial terms of the deal, which was completed in January 2019 using cash reserves, were not disclosed. N-of-One is not expected to provide a material contribution to Qiagen’s results in 2019.
For further information, visit Qiagen.
