Industry News: QIAGEN forms Lung Cancer Expert Alliance

QIAGEN has announced the formation of a global consortium of international lung cancer experts who will advise the company on the design of new next-generation sequencing (NGS) gene panels and associated workflows that target lung cancer-specific mutations.

The members of the consortium will work with a QIAGEN team to guide selection of the genes and variants for the panels, development of the NGS workflows, and the verification of both the panels and workflows. The results of these validation studies will be published by the Expert Alliance. From the work of the consortium, QIAGEN will deliver a series of Sample to Insight lung cancer NGS panel workflows for use with both tissue and liquid biopsy samples on QIAGEN’s GeneReader NGS System, the world’s first truly complete NGS workflow – from Sample to Insight.

The founding collaborators of the Alliance include:

• Marc Denis, Pharm.D., Ph.D., professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Nantes University Hospital, Nantes, France
• Prof. Dr. med. Manfred Dietel, Institute for Anatomic Pathology and of Charité, Humboldt-University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany
• Helen (D’Silva) Fernandes, Ph.D., associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, solid tumor section laboratory, Weill Cornell Medical School, New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York, New York
• Jesús García Foncillas, director of the Cancer Institute, University Hospital Network, University Hospital “Fundación Jiménez Díaz,” Madrid, Spain
• Henrik Hager, M.D., Ph.D., consultant pathologist and associate clinical professor, Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark
• Nicola Normanno, M.D., director of the Department of Experimental Oncology, INT-Fondazione Pascale, Naples, Italy
• Santiago Ramon y Cajal, M.D., Ph.D., chairman of the pathology department, Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, Barcelona, Spain
• Philippe Tanière, M.D., Ph.D., consultant pathologist, Queen Elizabeth Hospital and honorary senior lecturer at the Medical School, Birmingham, England

“I am delighted to join QIAGEN’s consortium of lung cancer experts to help tackle the many challenges in lung cancer research through NGS,” said Dr. Nicola Normanno, director of the Department of Experimental Oncology at the INT-Fondazione Pascale in Naples, Italy. “NGS is providing us with new opportunities by targeting individual genes and mutations that are associated with a particular kind of cancer. I look forward to working with renowned colleagues from around the world to advance the use of this revolutionary technology in lung cancer research.”

Lung cancer is the number one cancer killer in the world, according to the World Health Organization. The disease causes nearly 1.6 million deaths a year.

“We are grateful to the charter members of our lung cancer Expert Alliance for sharing our commitment to improving the understanding of the underlying causes of this terrible disease,” said Thierry Bernard, Senior Vice President and Head of QIAGEN’s Business Area Molecular Diagnostics. “Their work will benefit future patients – and add to our growing pipeline of lung cancer panels running on our GeneReader NGS System. This includes a panel for detection and analysis of genetic copy number variations from tissue and blood as well as an “All-in-One” lung cancer panel that adds gene fusions to its coverage of actionable variants.”

Since its introduction in late 2015, the GeneReader NGS System has gained widespread recognition as a complete Sample to Insight workflow solution. The system helps users overcome the workflow, data analysis and entry cost problems associated with other systems.

QIAGEN will demonstrate its Sample to Insight solutions for molecular diagnostic and research applications in oncology at Booth 18031 at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2016 Annual Meeting on June 3-7, 2016, in Chicago.