Lab Companies Turn to Product Integrations to Cut Costs, Risks, & Time

Laboratory test data is the hub around which the future of personalized medicine will revolve. This simple fact generates staggering strategic opportunities for diagnostic companies that are successful in developing novel products and services for capturing, connecting, storing, and delivering lab data. But if the rewards of innovation are high, so are the costs and risks.

Historically, lab and medical device companies have followed one of two basic approaches to acquire the knowledge, technology, and other assets necessary to achieve a new product breakthrough: Develop the resources in-house or obtain them by acquiring or merging with outside firms. However, a third model has now taken hold, one that reduces costs, minimizes risks, increases efficiency, and gets new products and services to the market more rapidly: strategic partnership. These collaborations require companies to break down their proprietary walls and share their innovations with one another.

Among the boldest form of strategic partnership is an arrangement in which companies agree to combine their proprietary offerings to form a new product or service that leverages the strengths of each partner. Such product integrations have become increasingly common in recent years. The period between late February through mid-March has been particularly notable, with the announcement of five significant product integration collaborations, including arrangements involving some of the lab industry’s most innovative companies.

Agilent Technologies & SOPHiA GENETICS for Cancer Genomic Profiling

Agilent Technologies and SOPHiA GENETICS made two product integration deals during the period, including one that calls for integrating SOPHiA’s DDM bioinformatics platform with Agilent’s newly launched research-use-only SureSelect Cancer Comprehensive Genomic Profiling (CGP) test kit. The assay formed by combining SOPHiA analytics and reporting with Agilent’s next generation sequencing technology will enable cancer researchers to identify multiple biomarkers and perform comprehensive tumor profiling in their own labs, noted Agilent Integrated Genomics Division vice president and general manager Kevin Meldrum in a press statement.¹

Agilent Technologies & Hamamatsu for Digital Pathology

The day before the alliance with SOPHiA went public, Agilent announced that it had cut a deal to incorporate Japanese firm Hamamatsu’s NanoZoomer S360MD Slide scanner into its own digital pathology workflows. The NanoZoomer is a high-throughput scanner that converts glass slides into high-resolution digital data at a rate of up to 82 slides per hour. Leveraging the NanoZoomer will allow Agilent to offer “an open and agnostic digital pathology workflow designed to accelerate breakthroughs in precision medicine,” Agilent said in the press release announcing the deal.²

SOPHiA GENETICS & Synergy Laboratories for Tumor Profiling

Meanwhile, Agilent’s other new strategic collaborator, SOPHiA GENETICS, also entered into a separate product integration deal to incorporate the DDM platform into a new tumor profiling test from the Synergy Oncology division of Synergy Laboratories. Called Totality, the new assay will sequence genes from solid tumors while drawing on the hereditary cancers capacities of the DDM to analyze the data and furnish reports to physicians that match variants with FDA-approved therapies and ongoing clinical trials. The pairing will enable Synergy to offer a “one-stop solution” in new areas of oncology, according to the company.³

Exact Sciences & VieCure for Cancer Treatment

Roughly a month after agreeing to integrate its clinical care oncology software with sequencing-based cancer tests from Labcorp, Denver-based informatics firm VieCure announced a similar deal with Exact Sciences.⁴ The arrangement will enable clinicians to use VieCure’s artificial intelligence (AI) platform that prompts clinical rules and guidelines to interpret the results of Exact Sciences’ genetic cancer tests (starting with the Oncotype DX breast cancer recurrence assay) and develop an appropriate patient-specific treatment plan.

Corista & Qritive for AI-Based Digital Pathology

On March 13, digital pathology firm Corista announced a new strategic partnership to combine its DP3 image management platform with AI-based modules developed by Qritive to create a new digital solution. That solution will enable the use of computational models to screen for prostate and colon cancers, quantify immunohistochemistry markers, and detect lymph node metastasis. “Corista’s image management system combined with the assistive power of Qritive’s AI modules is the ideal workbench for pathologists to conduct diagnostics with ease, consistency, and precision,” noted Qritive CEO and cofounder Aneesh Sathe in a statement.⁵

References:

1. https://ir.sophiagenetics.com/news-releases/news-release-details/sophia-genetics-and-agilent-partner-comprehensive-solution
2. https://www.investor.agilent.com/news-and-events/news/news-details/2023/Agilent-Announces-Digital-Pathology-Scanner-Distribution-Agreement-with-Hamamatsu/default.aspx
3. https://www.yahoo.com/now/synergy-laboratories-taps-sophia-genetics-140000108.html
4. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230306005155/en/VieCure-and-Exact-Sciences-Enter-Strategic-Collaboration-Aimed-at-Improving-Patient-Access-to-Genomic-Testing
5. https://corista.com/news/corista-and-qritive-partnership/

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Here’s a summary of other key strategic diagnostic deals announced in late February through mid-March 2023:

Strategic Alliances, Partnerships, & Collaborations

Distribution, Sales, & Marketing Agreements

Licenses

Government Contracts