LifeCodexx of Konstanz, Germany, will expand its laboratory next year to provide sequencing capacity for its upcoming non-invasive prenatal diagnostic test for trisomy 21, its parent company GATC Biotech said last week.
This summer, LifeCodexx licensed a patent surrounding technology for the test from Sequenom. Under the five-year agreement, the companies will develop and launch next-gen sequencing-based tests to diagnose trisomy 21 and possibly other aneuploidies in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Lichtenstein first, and maybe in other countries later (CSN 8/17/2011).
In June, LifeCodexx said that it started a clinical validation study of the trisomy 21 test, involving 500 samples analyzed on the Illumina HiSeq 2000. At the time, it was planning to launch the test by the end of this year (CSN 6/29/2011).
Sequenom started offering its MaterniT21 Down syndrome test as a lab-developed test in 20 metropolitan areas in the US last month (CSN 10/19/2011).