QIAGEN Partners With Leading European Service Provider GATC Biotech to Offer Clients Full Access to Ingenuity Variant Analysis

HILDEN, Germany and REDWOOD CITY, California, March 19, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

• Commercial agreement provides QIAGEN's Ingenuity^® Variant Analysis^[TM]  solution to sequencing provider's customers, expanding market reach of QIAGEN
• Leading software for analysis and interpretation will be offered to next-generation sequencing customers of GATC Biotech as part of its bioinformatics platform  
• Agreement adds integrated, accurate interpretation of disease-focused genetic data  

QIAGEN N.V. (NASDAQ: QGEN; Frankfurt Prime Standard: QIA) today announced a commercial agreement with GATC Biotech to provide GATC clients full access to QIAGEN's Ingenuity^® Variant Analysis^[TM] solution for analysis and interpretation of genetic data. GATC is one of Europe's leading providers of DNA and RNA sequencing services to customers worldwide. The access will take the form of interpretation services and direct access to Ingenuity Variant Analysis as a feature of the GATC Biotech's services. Ingenuity Variant Analysis is a powerful bioinformatics platform enabling laboratories to efficiently evaluate data generated by high-throughput next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies. The QIAGEN software quickly filters genetic variants in a secure, private cloud-based environment to identify variants most likely to cause disease, drawing upon the industry-leading Ingenuity Knowledge Base.

Dr. Marcus Benz, Chief Operating Officer of GATC Biotech, commented: "This new commercial agreement with QIAGEN provides our customers with full access to the Ingenuity software enabling rapid analysis and interpretation of next-generation sequencing data in terms of relevant genetic variations. We are offering our clients a unique, fully integrated one-stop solution. GATC Biotech selected the Ingenuity Variant Analysis solution as a perfect match. Integrating this software tool with our InView^[TM] Human Exome product enables us to provide world-class data analysis for end-users of NGS, including clinical and laboratory geneticists and other professionals investigating diseases."

"We are very pleased to partner with GATC Biotech, a respected provider serving more than 10,000 customers in academia and industry. Offering Ingenuity Variant Analysis to GATC Biotech clients, integrated with their own InView^[TM] Human Exome NGS solution, further expands the growing global presence of our solution for analysis and interpretation of NGS data," said Dr. Laura Furmanski, Senior Vice President of QIAGEN and head of the Bioinformatics Business Area. "As next-generation sequencing spreads and its focus moves from data generation to interpretation, QIAGEN's leadership in bioinformatics solutions enables laboratories and clinicians to move rapidly from raw data to valuable insights."

QIAGEN offers industry-leading applications for the analysis, interpretation, and reporting of biological data through a diverse portfolio of solutions that include the Ingenuity, CLC bio and BIOBASE product lines. Ingenuity Variant Analysis is the world's leading solution for analysis and interpretation of human sequencing data generated with NGS technologies. The web-based software leverages the Ingenuity Knowledge Base, a repository of expertly curated biological interactions and functional annotations created from millions of individually modeled relationships between proteins, genes, complexes, cells, tissues, drugs, and diseases. Data from more than 300,000 samples have so far been analyzed using Ingenuity Variant Analysis, which has helped to further expand the power of the Knowledge Base.

The agreement with GATC Biotech is non-exclusive, and financial terms were not disclosed.

About QIAGEN 

QIAGEN N.V., a Netherlands-based holding company, is the leading global provider of Sample to Insight solutions to transform biological materials into valuable molecular insights. QIAGEN sample technologies isolate and process DNA, RNA and proteins from blood, tissue and other materials. Assay technologies make these biomolecules visible and ready for analysis. Bioinformatics software and knowledge bases interpret data to report relevant, actionable insights. Automation solutions tie these together in seamless and cost-effective molecular testing workflows. QIAGEN provides these workflows to more than 500,000 customers around the world in Molecular Diagnostics (human healthcare), Applied Testing (forensics, veterinary testing and food safety), Pharma (pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies) and Academia (life sciences research). As of December 31, 2014, QIAGEN employed approximately 4,300 people in over 35 locations worldwide. Further information can be found at http://www.qiagen.com.

About GATC Biotech  

GATC Biotech, a family-owned business, is Europe's leading service provider of DNA and RNA sequencing. For over two decades, the company has offered sequencing and bioinformatics solutions from single samples up to large scale projects. During this time, GATC Biotech has developed to a renowned brand, not only mastering a broad range of technologies and related downstream data analysis, but also processing millions of customer samples in professional quality and ready for diagnostic purposes. The company offers true multiplatform sequencing using all leading sequencing technologies in its own labs. Its headquarter in Constance, Germany houses its ISO 17025 certified Genome and Diagnostic Centre with focus on next and third generation sequencing. The European Custom Sequencing Centre located in Cologne, Germany focuses on Sanger sequencing. This advantageous location ensures fast and efficient logistics. All laboratories have highly integrated and fully automated processing pipelines, ensuring full compliance with latest state-of-the-art quality standards.  Please visit http://www.gatc-biotech.com for more information.

Certain of the statements contained in this news release may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. To the extent that any of the statements contained herein relating to QIAGEN's products, markets, strategy or operating results, including without limitation its expected operating results, are forward-looking, such statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that involve a number of uncertainties and risks. Such uncertainties and risks include, but are not limited to, risks associated with management of growth and international operations (including the effects of currency fluctuations, regulatory processes and dependence on logistics), variability of operating results and allocations between customer classes, the commercial development of markets for our products in applied testing, personalized healthcare, clinical research, proteomics, women's health/HPV testing and nucleic acid-based molecular diagnostics; changing relationships with customers, suppliers and strategic partners; competition; rapid or unexpected changes in technologies; fluctuations in demand for QIAGEN's products (including fluctuations due to general economic conditions, the level and timing of customers' funding, budgets and other factors); our ability to obtain regulatory approval of our products; difficulties in successfully adapting QIAGEN's products to integrated solutions and producing such products; the ability of QIAGEN to identify and develop new products and to differentiate and protect our products from competitors' products; market acceptance of QIAGEN's new products, the consummation of acquisitions, and the integration of acquired technologies and businesses. For further information, please refer to the discussions in reports that QIAGEN has filed with, or furnished to, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 

Contacts: 
Public Relations: 
Dr. Thomas Theuringer
Director Public Relations
+49-2103-29-11826
+1-240-686-7425
Email: [email protected]

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Investor Relations:
John Gilardi
Vice President Corporate Communications and Investor Relations
+49-2103-29-11711
+1-240-686-2222

Email: [email protected]
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SOURCE QIAGEN N.V.