NEW YORK – Illumina said on Tuesday that it has partnered with French company GenoScreen on genomic testing for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.
Under the terms of the partnership, the firms will package Illumina next-generation sequencing reagents with GenoScreen's Deeplex Myc-TB assay, a targeted sequencing assay for the detection of TB and other bacteria and the prediction of resistance to 15 antibiotics.
Financial and other details of the partnership were not disclosed.
"Through our partnership, we will enable lower-income countries to confront the pervasive threat of TB and work toward eliminating it," Phil Febbo, chief medical officer at Illumina, said in a statement. "The COVID-19 pandemic response led to expanded NGS capacity around the world, so now institutions have the platforms needed to support testing for TB drug resistance and improve survival for patients with TB, the leading infectious disease killer prior to COVID."
Based in Lille, GenoScreen launched Deeplex Myc-TB kits in 2019, obtaining CE-IVD marking for the test in 2020.
Illumina has donated sequencing instruments to the Seq&Treat project.