QIAGEN inks agreements with BGI Tech, AstraZeneca

SHENZHEN, China & WOLFENBUETTEL, Germany—QIAGEN and BGI Tech Solutions Co., Ltd. (BGI Tech), a subsidiary of BGI, have announced a distribution and service agreement for the Human Gene Mutation Database (HGMD) in Greater China. Per the terms of the agreement, BGI Tech will serve the Chinese market, which includes providing first-level support for the database.

“This is a win-win collaboration for both of us. BGI Tech dedicates to accelerating scientific progresses in biomedicine, agriculture and environment. Collaborating with QIAGEN can enrich our scientific strengths in the fields of human genetics and complex diseases, and enable us to provide better services for our global collaborators,” Yingrui Li, CEO of BGI Tech, commented in a statement.

HGMD is offered by BIOBASE, a QIAGEN company integrated with earlier this year, and provides comprehensive data on inherited disease mutations for genetics and genomic research. It was one of the tools utilized for analyzing the genomes assembled in the 1,000 Genomes Project.

“Known for their outstanding contributions to science, BGI is committed to excellence in everything they do, and want only the best-in-class solutions for their customers,” Frank Schacherer, chief technical officer of BIOBASE, said in a press release. “Assessing mutations is an important need for many of their customers, so it is logical for them to represent HGMD. New and existing HGMD customers in Greater China will benefit from local support and from a distributor with deep subject-matter expertise.”

This is the second partnership QIAGEN has announced in as many days. On July 28, the company announced a collaboration with AstraZeneca to co-develop and commercialize a liquid biopsy-based companion diagnostic that will be paired with IRESSA, AstraZeneca’s targeted therapy for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). This collaboration builds off of a master framework agreement QIAGEN and AstraZeneca signed last year, and will focus on the development and marketing of a companion diagnostic that analyzes samples to determine EGFR mutation status in NSCLC patients and help guide their treatment when tumor tissue is not available.

“We are very pleased to collaborate with AstraZeneca in developing this new tool to improve life for lung cancer patients. This collaboration will further expand QIAGEN’s rapidly growing portfolio of liquid biopsy solutions for personalized healthcare, which paves a path for patient monitoring using blood tests for future QIAGEN therascreen companion diagnostics. We are changing the treatment landscape with highly reliable genomic tests based on blood samples or other body fluids, providing physicians and patients with additional options to determine treatments and monitor progress,” said Peer M. Schatz, CEO of QIAGEN, in a press release. “This new project with AstraZeneca under our master collaboration agreement, one of several such Pharma partnerships, adds to our expanding portfolio of reliable companion diagnostics which are creating valuable test content for the QIAsymphony family of automated instruments. As tests are developed, commercialization is accelerated through the established network of laboratories already using assays in QIAGEN’s industry-leading portfolio of companion diagnostics.”

SOURCE: QIAGEN press release