Business people shaking hands in microchip
Business people shaking hands in microchip

Qiagen announced it has entered an agreement to acquire oncology decision support company N-of-One, which provides clinical interpretation services for complex genomic data for both the clinical setting and pharmaceutical research. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

N-of-One’s current customer base stretches has been built primarily in the clinical arena and includes hospitals, oncologists, pathologists and doctors labs and leverages a curated cancer, biomarker and drug database to provide clinical decision support. Over the past couple of years, it has also pushed into the pharmaceutical market to provide service for the development of precision medicine programs and targeted therapies.

Among its other business areas, Qiagen also provides clinical decision support through its Qiagen Clinical Insight (QCI) platform, which focuses on next-generation sequencing (NGS) interpretation. According to a press release announcing the acquisition, Qiagen plans to integrate N-of-One’s proprietary MarkerMine database with QCI to broaden the scope of its platform to include real-world evidence and patient-by-patient medical interpretation.

The addition of N-of-One will enable Qiagen to significantly expand its decision-support solutions while offering a broader range of software, content and service-based solutions. It will also enable Qiagen to provide customers with greater access to valuable genomic data assets and service offerings. Other clinical interpretation tools from N-of-One include Precision Insights and Rapid Insights reporting tools for clinical interpretation, which will also be integrated with QCI.

“N-of-One has made tremendous strides in molecular oncology decision support, and their combination with Qiagen’s own pre-curated knowledge base of evidence will provide powerful new tools to expand our abilities to deliver patient-specific insights,” said Jonathan Sheldon, senior vice president of Qiagen’s bioinformatics business area. “This will further strengthen Qiagen’s leadership in clinical decision support and provide customers with solutions powered by real-world evidence Insights.”

N-of-One’s core business revolves around producing case-specific reports based on data generated with molecular tests, including NGS, and providing clinical evidence for biomarkers along with therapeutic options clinicians can consider. N-of-One also provides patient-specific clinical trial matching services and a somatic cancer database with more than 125,000 anonymized patient samples.

 “We are excited about expanding N-of-One’s impact. With Qiagen’s resources and reach, our combined technology will provide more patients with greater potential therapeutic strategies,” said Christine M. Cournoyer, CEO of N-of-One, in a prepared statement.

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