Qiagen and Bayer HealthCare to develop cancer diagnostics

Qiagen will be collaborating with Bayer HealthCare to develop a series of new companion diagnostic products for cancer treatments.

The targeted companion diagnostics will be designed to run on the QIAsymphony family of automated instruments and paired with innovative therapies for patients with solid tumours developed by Bayer HealthCare.

Companion diagnostics assess molecular information from each patient's tumour genome to guide treatment decisions, allowing doctors to gauge the potential efficacy of therapies.

Dr Helge Lubenow, senior vice-president for Qiagen's molecular diagnostics division and a member of its executive committee, said: "Our agreement also lays the groundwork for a strong partnership in creating future companion diagnostics both inside and outside of oncology."

Additionally, both organisations will work to develop novel technologies for patient profiling, which may result in innovative research-use-only products for exploratory and translational medicine.

This comes after the firm agreed a collaboration with Lepu Medical Technology in China last month that aims to provide rapid diagnosis of heart attacks using point of need testing.