QIAGEN to acquire stake in Alacris, gaining access to biomarker pipeline for use in personalized healthcare assays
Qiagen has signed an agreement for the acquisition of a strategic stake in Alacris Theranostics GmbH, a German start-up company using novel technologies to develop individualized cancer treatment strategies based upon a patient’s genomic profile, and for the acquisition of an exclusive option to access all biomarkers emerging from this discovery program.
Alacris, founded by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics (MPI-MG) in Berlin and Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, USA, uses a proprietary modeling system developed at MPI-MG and exclusively licensed to Alacris Theranostics, to analyze clinical sample data based on next-generation and other whole genome sequencing technologies.
This system, called ModCell™, addresses a critical bottleneck in the development of personalized healthcare solutions. It allows users to identify and select from vast amounts of genetic data such markers that can prove useful to guide treatment decisions for patients. The technology can also be used to create marker subsets to stratify potential patient populations for R&D trials involving medicines in clinical development. These marker selections can be formatted into real-time PCR-based assays that QIAGEN can commercialize within its pharmaceutical development assay portfolio or its therascreen molecular diagnostics portfolio for use on its new QIAsymphony RGQ platform.
The collaboration brings together the global leadership of QIAGEN in developing molecular diagnostic and testing solutions in pharmaceutical development and personalized healthcare with Alacris’ genomic data generation and mining capabilities and preferential access to large and well-characterized clinical sample sets.
“The genome-driven approach of Alacris complements our strategy very well since it facilitates a clinically relevant selection of molecular targets from vast amounts of genetic and clinical data. QIAGEN intends to develop such molecular targets into assays for our QIAsymphony platform to personalize treatments and improve outcomes for patients,” said Peer Schatz, Chief Executive Officer of QIAGEN. “Our strategic investment in Alacris expands QIAGEN’s existing broad biomarker discovery and validation initiatives and is designed to expand our QIAsymphony-based personalized healthcare and pharma development assay portfolio.”
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