QIAGEN and Tecan Announce Collaboration to Streamline Preanalytical Processing of QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus
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QIAGEN N.V. and Tecan Group AG, a global leader in laboratory automation and liquid handling technology, announced a collaboration to improve the processing of QIAGEN’s QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus (QFT-Plus) diagnostic test through the utilization of Tecan’s Fluent® Laboratory Automation workstation for the aliquoting of samples for the optional Lithium Heparin single-tube workflow. The Fluent instruments will be supplied directly to laboratories through Tecan’s Life Sciences Business.
QIAGEN’s fourth-generation QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus is the modern gold standard for latent tuberculosis (TB) detection based on world leading interferon gamma release assay (IGRA) technology.
QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus offers customers the most flexible workflow among latent TB screening tests, including a single-tube option that enables efficient screening in large-scale programs by collecting blood samples at patient sites and transporting them to labs for processing up to 53 hours after venipuncture.
The two parties are working together to optimize a solution that standardizes and automates the manual steps in liquid handling for the aliquoting of samples. Customers will be able to leverage the high-performance Fluent automation system and thereby achieve the goal of significantly reducing hands-on time, providing greater ease of use and ensure consistency in pre-analytic methods and thereby reducing processing errors and variability between runs. Front-end automation solutions also offer laboratories efficient automation of single tube collection for QuantiFERON, and thereby create efficiency in the lab and improve the patient blood collection experience.
“We are pleased to collaborate with Tecan, a proven leader with a track record of providing best-in-class liquid handling technology solutions, to further improve the automation of the pre-analytic manual steps leading to our QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus test for customers,” said Thierry Bernard, Senior Vice President, Head of the Molecular Diagnostics Business Area at QIAGEN N.V. “This automated workflow, which has potential to be rolled out globally, should significantly improve laboratories’ economics and ease of use for the QuantiFERON-TB technology, especially in clinical markets that increasingly rely on the single-tube collection version of the test.”
Dr. Klaus Lun, Executive Vice President and Head of the Life Sciences Business division at Tecan added, “Our vision at Tecan is to empower every laboratory, every day, around the world and we are delighted to collaborate with QIAGEN, a global leader in the important area of modern latent TB detection, to help even more labs to increase productivity and reduce processing errors through automation of tedious manual steps.”
This new collaboration with Tecan is the second such collaboration within a year and expands the partners working with QIAGEN to provide new front-end automation solutions. QIAGEN’s goal in these partnerships is to provide customers a range of choices to address the unique needs of customers to improve the processing of QFT-Plus for customers using the single-tube collection version.
QIAGEN also has a partnership with DiaSorin (FTSE Italy Mid Cap: DIA), which was announced in January 2018. In this partnership, the two parties created the option to use a readout kit for QFT-Plus on the DiaSorin LIAISON family of fully automated analyzers and thereby embed QFT Plus in a broad menu of assays and on a best-in-class clinical diagnostic platform. The U.S. launch of this collaboration is planned for 2019 and China in 2020.
QFT-Plus builds on the foundation of QuantiFERON-TB Gold (QFT), the third-generation version of the world’s leading interferon gamma release assay (IGRA), and is being rolled out worldwide amid new recommendations that are broadening the use of IGRAs in the U.S. and other countries.
QIAGEN’s fourth-generation QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus is the modern gold standard for latent tuberculosis (TB) detection based on world leading interferon gamma release assay (IGRA) technology.
QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus offers customers the most flexible workflow among latent TB screening tests, including a single-tube option that enables efficient screening in large-scale programs by collecting blood samples at patient sites and transporting them to labs for processing up to 53 hours after venipuncture.
The two parties are working together to optimize a solution that standardizes and automates the manual steps in liquid handling for the aliquoting of samples. Customers will be able to leverage the high-performance Fluent automation system and thereby achieve the goal of significantly reducing hands-on time, providing greater ease of use and ensure consistency in pre-analytic methods and thereby reducing processing errors and variability between runs. Front-end automation solutions also offer laboratories efficient automation of single tube collection for QuantiFERON, and thereby create efficiency in the lab and improve the patient blood collection experience.
“We are pleased to collaborate with Tecan, a proven leader with a track record of providing best-in-class liquid handling technology solutions, to further improve the automation of the pre-analytic manual steps leading to our QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus test for customers,” said Thierry Bernard, Senior Vice President, Head of the Molecular Diagnostics Business Area at QIAGEN N.V. “This automated workflow, which has potential to be rolled out globally, should significantly improve laboratories’ economics and ease of use for the QuantiFERON-TB technology, especially in clinical markets that increasingly rely on the single-tube collection version of the test.”
Dr. Klaus Lun, Executive Vice President and Head of the Life Sciences Business division at Tecan added, “Our vision at Tecan is to empower every laboratory, every day, around the world and we are delighted to collaborate with QIAGEN, a global leader in the important area of modern latent TB detection, to help even more labs to increase productivity and reduce processing errors through automation of tedious manual steps.”
This new collaboration with Tecan is the second such collaboration within a year and expands the partners working with QIAGEN to provide new front-end automation solutions. QIAGEN’s goal in these partnerships is to provide customers a range of choices to address the unique needs of customers to improve the processing of QFT-Plus for customers using the single-tube collection version.
QIAGEN also has a partnership with DiaSorin (FTSE Italy Mid Cap: DIA), which was announced in January 2018. In this partnership, the two parties created the option to use a readout kit for QFT-Plus on the DiaSorin LIAISON family of fully automated analyzers and thereby embed QFT Plus in a broad menu of assays and on a best-in-class clinical diagnostic platform. The U.S. launch of this collaboration is planned for 2019 and China in 2020.
QFT-Plus builds on the foundation of QuantiFERON-TB Gold (QFT), the third-generation version of the world’s leading interferon gamma release assay (IGRA), and is being rolled out worldwide amid new recommendations that are broadening the use of IGRAs in the U.S. and other countries.
