On March 1, 2023 QIAGEN N.V. (NYSE: QGEN; Frankfurt Prime Standard: QIA) reported the launch of the new QIAseq Platform Partnership program and the first partnership with medical data-analysis provider SOPHiA GENETICSTM (Nasdaq: SOPH) that will bring together its QIAseq reagent technology for next-generation sequencing (NGS) with the SOPHiA DDMTM digital analytics platform (Press release, Qiagen, MAR 1, 2023, View Source [SID1234627989]).

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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.