Qiagen, Hilden, Germany, has announced a partnership with artificial intelligence genomics company, Freenome, San Francisco, to accelerate the development and commercialization of next-generation sequencing (NGS) tests and advance precision medicine in cancer treatment. The alliance is one of several initiatives that Qiagen hopes will expand the reach of its NGS tests in line with the recent modernization of FDA’s regulatory approach.
Qiagen discussed its partnership with Freenome and showcased its portfolio of sample-to-insight solutions for cancer at the recent annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).
Peer Schatz, Qiagen.
“Qiagen is helping to drive the exciting progress in applying a broad range of molecular testing technologies, including NGS, to deliver personalized genomic insights for decisionmaking in cancer treatment,” says Peer M. Schatz, CEO of Qiagen. “We are intensifying our efforts for development, regulatory review, and launch of precision diagnostic tests because we share the vision of making improvements in life possible for patients with cancer.”
Qiagen’s partnership with Freenome aims to accelerate companion diagnostics development in immunooncology by pairing industry-leading artificial intelligence with Qiagen’s sample-to-insight solutions. The partners will comarket the solutions to provide pharmaceutical companies with access to insights from a broad range of biological signals, augmenting in-house bioinformatics. The collaboration addresses the need for faster, more accurate, and increasingly sophisticated molecular diagnostic tests that predict whether a patient will benefit from immunooncology therapies.
Freenome’s artificial intelligence genomics platform enables sequencing and analysis of multiple analytes to evaluate genomic, proteomic, and epigenetic changes. Additionally, the platform integrates complex datasets from those changes to develop clinically actionable recommendations, such as prediction of response to oncology therapies. The solutions complement Qiagen’s bioinformatics platforms as well as the GeneReader NGS system.
It is hoped that the companies’ partnership will open the way to new targets in precision oncology and improve therapeutic decisionmaking. The companies will collaborate on Qiagen’s next-generation tumor mutational burden (TMB) assay for determining the level of TMB from a cancer patient’s blood. The partners’ integral technologies will deliver a TMB result from a blood sample, and address the fact that tumor DNA is present at very low levels within the blood.
At the recent ASCO meeting, Qiagen showcased new panels for the GeneReader NGS system ahead of market launch, including the GeneRead QIAact BRCA advanced panel, a comprehensive assay for research in somatic and hereditary mutations; and the QIAact myeloid DNA panel, which supports myeloid neoplasm research, covering 25 highly relevant genes and their variants, including single-nucleotide variants and insertions/deletions. In addition, the company will be releasing a new version of the successful GeneRead QIAact actionable insights tumor panel with higher analytical sensitivity and specificity for somatic variants. The panels are currently available for research use only.
To learn more, visit Qiagen.
