Qiagen has announced the expansion of its Master Collaboration Agreement with AstraZeneca to develop and commercialise companion diagnostics (CDx) for AstraZeneca’s future therapies being developed to address chronic diseases.

Under the agreement, Qiagen will develop and validate a genotyping assay using its syndromic testing platform QIAstat-Dx. The test will enable specialty care providers to potentially perform genotyping whilst patients are undergoing routine clinical examination, thus enabling fast decision making for potential suitability for AstraZeneca’s genomically targeted medicines.

The QIAstat-Dx system, designed for laboratory use, employs cost-efficient, single-use cartridges with built-in sample processing and on-board reagents. Utilizing multiplex real-time PCR, it detects and differentiates between multiple biomarkers, with results in about an hour. QIAstat-Dx also provides easy‑to‑view cycle threshold (Ct) values and amplification curves, offering additional insights not available with end-point PCR or other techniques. At the end of 2023, over 4,000 cumulative instrument placements had been made.

QIAGEN has master collaboration agreements to develop and commercialize companion diagnostics with more than 30 global companies – a deep pipeline that will advance precision medicine, which tailors a patient’s treatment to the genetic profile identified by companion diagnostics testing. Furthermore, QIAGEN has a series of collaborations with Neuron23 and Helix to develop companion diagnostics in disease areas outside oncology.