NEW YORK – Qiagen and Verogen said on Tuesday that they have signed a partnership to provide laboratories with tools and support for next-generation sequencing-based human identification workflows.
Under the partnership, Qiagen obtains the rights to globally distribute current and future Verogen products. In addition, the companies will collaborate to commercialize Verogen's forensically validated NGS workflows with Qiagen's sample prep automation to provide full sample-to-ID workflows for human ID labs.
"This partnership with Qiagen will make it easier for the laboratories to provide more impactful answers," Verogen CEO Brett Williams said in a statement. "By combining Verogen's industry-leading NGS-based product portfolio with Qiagen's gold-standard extraction, assay, and automation solutions, we can accelerate adoption and utilization of NGS in forensic operations."
Qiagen CEO Thierry Bernard added in a statement that the partnership "will drive the adoption of NGS in human identification as it will enable our customers to gain even better insights from their casework samples. This will ultimately strengthen justice systems all over the world."
In May, Verogen announced that it had partnered with Eurofins to implement NGS into routine forensic DNA casework.