Inovio Pharma, Qiagen To Develop Next Gen Sequencing Companion Diagnostic For VGX-3100

(RTTNews) - Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. (INO) and Qiagen N.V. (QGEN) announced Wednesday their collaboration to develop next generation sequencing or NGS companion diagnostic for Inovio's VGX-3100 for advanced cervical dysplasia.

The companies are extending their partnership for the development of liquid biopsy-based companion diagnostic products based on NGS technology to complement INOVIO's therapies.

The initial project in this expanded collaboration focuses on the co-development of a diagnostic test that identifies women who are most likely to benefit from clinical use of VGX-3100, INOVIO's immunotherapy to treat advanced cervical dysplasia associated with the human papillomavirus or HPV.

VGX-3100 is INOVIO's late-stage DNA immunotherapy candidate. It is currently in two Phase 3 trials (REVEAL 1 and REVEAL 2), with the potential to become the first non-surgical treatment for advanced pre-cancerous cervical lesions associated with the virus (HPV-16 and HPV-18).

QIAGEN's bioinformatic expertise will further increase the predictive power of INOVIO's preliminary biomarker signature - and the assay will now be developed for use on the Illumina NextSeq 550Dx platform, the first development based on a partnership QIAGEN and Illumina signed in October 2019.