SOPHiA GENETICS and Paragon Genomics Join Forces Against the Coronavirus Pandemic

SOPHiA GENETICS has announced that it is entering the fight against the COVID-19 coronavirus by extending its partnership with Paragon Genomics, who developed a next-generation sequencing (NGS) assay and leveraging the SOPHiA Platform analytical capabilities, as well as delivering the benefits of this solution to its install base of over 1,000 hospitals worldwide in the next weeks.

The new solution combines Paragon Genomics’ CleanPlex SARS-CoV-2 NGS panel reagent kit for whole-genome sequencing of the coronavirus with the advanced analytical power of the SOPHiA Platform for a comprehensive solution to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Through SOPHiA GENETICS global decentralized approach, healthcare institutions worldwide will be able to leverage high quality NGS-based genomic testing in order to scale accurate diagnoses and help address the exponentially growing number of cases.

“This unique solution provides multiple benefits for patients and the global medical community at large: a significant increase in the throughput of available COVID-19 diagnostic tests by complementing current PCR-based approaches, a higher analytical quality notably linked to higher sensitivity, and the ability to longitudinally track the evolution of the virus over time at a whole-genome level. Viral antigenic drifts over time and around the world will be of paramount importance going forward. This will enable us to accelerate accurate diagnosis capabilities, support global epidemiology efforts as the disease progresses and work with our biopharma partners to accelerate the development of candidate vaccines and anti-viral therapeutic approaches,” said SOPHiA GENETICS Chief Medical Officer Philippe Menu.

Jurgi Camblong Founder and CEO of SOPHiA GENETICS added, “The current situation is dramatic and diagnostic capabilities haven’t scaled as we would have hoped. NGS approaches seem to become essential. Given that thousands of hospitals around the world are already equipped with NGS instruments, accurate NGS based tests could be critical to scale and support the increasing need for diagnosis. Such approach will require specific data analytics solutions. Given our current install base with SOPHiA Platform in over 1,000 hospitals worldwide we have taken the decision to temporarily deviate our development efforts from our focus on Hereditary disorders and Oncology and add additional resources to support the medical community addressing the current COVID-19 pandemic. Each of those 1,000 hospitals implementing this solution at full capacity could support the diagnostic of over 1,000,000 additional cases per week.”