QIAGEN announced a global strategic alliance with Japan's Sysmex Corporation for the development and commercialization of cancer companion diagnostics, which will leverage both QIAGEN's leadership in this field and Sysmex's Plasma-Safe-SeqS technology for next generation sequencing (NGS). The alliance aims to foster collaborations with pharmaceutical companies for the development of drug treatments for cancer and promote early clinical adoption of ultra-sensitive liquid biopsy companion diagnostics. QIAGEN and Sysmex have a longstanding partnership, which, for example, provides the ipsogen JAK2 blood-cancer test in Japan.

Cancer companion-diagnostics products will be launched by QIAGEN and Sysmex in various regions of the world. Genetic analysis of tumors makes it possible to identify the genes responsible for the development and spread of a tumor and to target treatment accordingly. But the traditional analysis of solid tumors is constrained by their heterogeneity – varying concentrations of cancer cells, for example – and by sample availability.

Liquid biopsy addresses these challenges and, in combination with sensitive NGS, allows the evaluation of patients at different points of their cancer treatment. It enables doctors to spot new anomalies and adjust treatments to make them more precise, and to develop novel targeted therapies. QIAGEN is a pioneer in precision medicine.

It is the global leader in collaborating with pharmaceuticals and biotechnology companies to co-develop companion diagnostics that detect genetic abnormalities and guide clinical decision-making. QIAGEN has an unmatched breadth and depth of technologies – from NGS to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) – for companion-diagnostics development. QIAGEN's portfolio includes ten PCR-based companion-diagnostics products that are approved by the FDA.

They include therascreen EGFR for non-small cell lung cancer, therascreen KRAS for colorectal cancer and NSCL (including the G12C mutation), therascreen FGFR for urothelial cancer, therascreen PIK3CA for breast cancer based on tissue or plasma samples, and the therascreen BRAF kit for colorectal cancer.