Merck Serono and Life Technologies ally on diagnostics development

Merck Serono is teaming up with Life Technologies to create new companion diagnostic products, thus strengthening its commitment to personalised medicine.

The non-exclusive agreement covers current and future companion diagnostics projects, with an initial oncology scheme providing the foundation for a long-term collaboration across a potentially broad range of Life instrument platforms and therapeutic areas.

It will encompass the development, regulatory approval and commercialisation of companion diagnostics for selected Merck Serono drug development programmes, taking advantage of Life's expertise in genetic and proteomic analysis, next-generation sequencing, Sanger sequencing, qPCR and flow cytometry.

Ronnie Andrews, president for genetic and medical sciences at Life Technologies, said: "By helping pharma target the right cancer patients in clinical trials, we believe that we have the potential to rapidly accelerate cancer drug development – and this is good for everyone."

This comes after Merck Serono announced details of a five-year clinical development agreement with the biopharmaceutical services provider Quintiles earlier this year.