QIAGEN to Deliver Genomic Insights For Japan’s New Molecular Oncology Clinical Research and Precision Medicine Initiative

QIAGEN has announced that its QIAGEN Clinical Insight (QCI) offering was selected by the National Cancer Center of Japan, as part of the Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s precision medicine program, for the analysis, interpretation and reporting of molecular oncology and oncogenetic screening of cancer patients to contribute to the identification of targeted therapy treatment and clinical trial options.

Japan’s Center for Cancer Genomics and Advanced Therapeutics (C-CAT), a unit within the National Cancer Center (NCC) of Japan, will use QIAGEN’s QCI platform including expert curated evidence knowledge bases, bioinformatics software and data center infrastructure to support the C-CAT’s molecular profiling services for core and cooperative hospitals of the country’s cancer genomic medicine program. QIAGEN has established an in-country data center in Tokyo, compliant with Japanese data security and privacy regulations, to support this national program.

QCI is a cloud-based clinical decision support software platform used to generate actionable insights from next-generation sequencing (NGS) data. QCI leverages QIAGEN’s expert manually curated evidence knowledge base that includes more than 10 million biomedical findings and thereby be far represents the world’s largest commercial database of curated evidence data on somatic and inherited genetic variants. QCI-Interpret minimizes the complexity and cost of determining the significance of NGS data and automates guidelines for clinical actionability from leading oncology and pathology organizations.

“The Center for Cancer Genomics and Advanced Therapeutics was established to make a difference by offering cancer patients in Japan the most advanced care available, using genomic medicine to optimize and personalize strategies for treatment and prevention based on somatic and germline profiles. We are pleased to partner with QIAGEN for the bioinformatics to support this nationwide effort,” said Dr. Hiroyuki Mano, Director of C-CAT. “C-CAT and our network of hospitals will use the QCI solution because of the breadth and depth of its professionally curated knowledge base, the ability to match patients with approved treatments or clinical trials and QIAGEN’s customization of its QCI solution for C-CAT’s specific needs.”

“We are pleased to partner with the NCC Japan and its C-CAT unit in this landmark program of nationally sponsored and reimbursed NGS testing in Japan. We believe that C-CATs initiative will greatly benefit the Japanese patient population. Japan is taking a proactive step to save and extend patients’ lives and at the same time accelerate novel drug development by establishing its precision medicine program. C-CAT is taking a very thoughtful and visionary approach to aggregating genomic as well as clinical information for cancer patients to develop enhanced Japanese population-specific knowledge and reference sets which will serve as the foundation for effective precision medicine capabilities going forward”, stated Dr. Jonathan Sheldon, Senior Vice President and Head of QIAGEN’s Bioinformatics Business Area.

The incidence of cancer has been growing in Japan, with about 1 million patients diagnosed each year and one of every two people now developing cancer during their lifetimes. Cancer has been the country’s leading cause of death in recent decades. Genomic insights often aid in clinical decision-making by revealing somatic changes, which may be caused by lifestyle factors such as smoking or diet, or inherited (germline) variations – either of which can influence the efficacy of oncology drugs. Genomic profiling may help physicians match therapies to the precise combination of genetic variants for this or other cancers.

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