Date: 2011-01-11
Type of information:
Compound: stake in Alacris Theranostics
Company: Alacris Theranostics (Germany) Qiagen (The Netherlands)
Therapeutic area:
Type agreement:
Action mechanism:
Disease:
Details: Qiagen has signed an agreement for the acquisition of a strategic stake in Alacris Theranostics GmbH, a German start-up company using novel technologies to develop individualized cancer treatment strategies based upon a patient\'s genomic profile, and for the acquisition of an exclusive option to access all biomarkers emerging from this discovery program. The collaboration brings together the global leadership of Qiagen in developing molecular diagnostic and testing solutions in pharmaceutical development and personalized healthcare with Alacris\' genomic data generation and mining capabilities and preferential access to large and well-characterized clinical sample sets.
Alacris has been founded by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics (MPI-MG) in Berlin and Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, USA. The company uses a proprietary modeling system developed at MPI-MG and exclusively licensed to Alacris Theranostics, to analyze clinical sample data based on next-generation and other whole genome sequencing technologies. This system, called ModCell™, addresses a critical bottleneck in the development of personalized healthcare solutions. It allows users to identify and select from vast amounts of genetic data such markers that can prove useful to guide treatment decisions for patients. The technology can also be used to create marker subsets to stratify potential patient populations for R&D trials involving medicines in clinical development. These marker selections can be formatted into real-time PCR-based assays that Qiagen can commercialize within its pharmaceutical development assay portfolio or its therascreen molecular diagnostics portfolio for use on its new QIAsymphony RGQ platform.
Financial terms: QIAGEN will acquire a minority stake in Alacris Theranostics GmbH, and an exclusive option for access to all biomarkers that are discovered. Alacris will participate in commercialization of these biomarkers through royalty fees. Financial details of the agreement, which is subject to closing requirements as approval of Alacris\' shareholders, were not disclosed.
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