Molecular diagnostics company NuProbe and Qiagen have signed a collaboration agreement to develop next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based cancer diagnostic tests for non-invasive liquid biopsy.

Under the agreement, NuProbe’s Blocker Displacement Amplification (BDA) technology will be integrated with Qiagen’s Single Primer Extension (SPE) technology.

Integration of these technologies will enable an accurate and affordable analysis of DNA mutations with low variant allele fractions.

Furthermore, it will help the advancement of non-invasive cancer genomic profiling.

NuProbe innovation co-founder and head David Zhang said: “BDA technology is one of our core technologies and have been demonstrated robustness across multiple platforms including NGS. We are enthusiastic to further expand its application to Qiagen’s recognised SPE platform.”

The agreement initially focuses on developing research use on products for clinical researchers in oncology.

In the future, both companies may explore further strategic collaboration and develop other commercial products.

NuProbe chairman and CEO Yingshuang Chai said: “We are excited about the potential products that will come out of the two synergistic rare variant enrichment and detection methods.

“This collaboration further demonstrates the adoption of our cutting-edge technology by industry leaders, and our high valuable products will help more eligible patients benefit from therapy selection and recurrence monitoring with non-invasive detection.”

NuProbe recently completed five CE IVD registrations for molecular diagnostic products including liquid biopsy mutation detection kits for the EGFR and BRAF genes.

They also include common mutations related to non-small-cell lung cancer (EGFR mutations) and for melanoma and thyroid cancer (BRAF mutations) products.

The company is also planning CE IVD and NMPA registrations for additional products including the recently released VarTrace AML Multi-gene Panel.

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