NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Qiagen today said that it will collaborate with Bayer HealthCare on developing companion diagnostics for Bayer drugs with an initial focus on those that target solid tumors.
The companion diagnostic tests will run on Qiagen's QIA symphony automated instruments. In addition, the partners said that they will collaborate on developing technologies for patient profiling, which may result on research-use-only products for exploratory and translational medicine, said Qiagen.
"The first collaborations for Bayer HealthCare and Qiagen include companion diagnostics based on the identification of patients who may respond to therapies in clinically unmet disease classifications," Helge Lubenow, SVP of the molecular diagnostics business area and member of the executive committee of Qiagen, said in a statement. "Our agreement also lays the groundwork for a strong partnership in creating future companion diagnostics both inside and outside of oncology."
Financial and other terms of the alliance were not disclosed.
Qiagen said that it has more than 15 companion diagnostic collaborations ongoing with pharmaceutical and biotech companies.
In early July the US Food and Drug Administration cleared for marketing Qiagen's therascreen KRAS RGQ PCR Kit to be sold as a companion diagnostic test for Erbitux (cetuximab), a drug used for treating colorectal cancer.