Angle establishes co-marketing deal with QIAGEN

Biopsy company Angle announced on Monday that it has established a co-marketing agreement with QIAGEN, which it described as a “world-leading provider” of molecular testing solutions with more than 500,000 customers in molecular diagnostics, applied testing , pharma and academia.

The AIM-traded firm said the partnership would seek to leverage the advantages of combining its Parsortix system for harvesting circulating tumor cells with QIAGEN's liquid biopsy solution portfolio which consists of dedicated next generation sequencing, polymerase chain reaction, single cell analysis products and bioinformatics capabilities.

It said the initial focus would be on prostate and breast cancer research applications.

The agreement involved both companies offering the other's products to its customer base, and followed an “intensive evaluation” of Parsortix by QIAGEN, Angle’s board explained.

“Angle’s Parsortix system is a unique, epitope-independent CTC solution offering easy, automated processing of whole blood to harvest all types of CTCs, including the clinically relevant mesenchymal CTCs, for analysis,” said QIAGEN’s senior director of molecular preanalytic technologies Michael Kazinski.

“It complements very well with our AdnaTest CTC portfolio, now allowing for both phenotypic and molecular characterization of CTCs.

“The modular combination abilities of this system with QIAGEN's liquid biopsy-based Sample to Insight offering, including AdnaTest, our targeted RNAseq and single cell solutions, along with our bioinformatics offering, will allow scientists and clinical researchers to significantly advance their research.”

Angle founder and chief executive Andrew Newland said the board was “delighted” that Parsortix had been selected by QIAGEN as their label-free CTC harvesting technology.

“We believe the ability to offer customers a combination of Parsortix with validated and reliable downstream analysis technologies from a world leader such as QIAGEN facilitates key aspects of the sales cycle and we look forward to working closely together.

“Partnering is a core part of ANGLE's strategy to secure widespread adoption of Parsortix right across the market leveraging the customer base and distribution channels of established players.”