Qiagen Buys Ingenuity to Provide Software Complement to Molecular Testing Solutions

Qiagen said this week that it acquired Ingenuity Systems for $105 million in cash in order to offer its life science and clinical customers a complete and integrated workflow for its PCR- and next-generation sequencing-based molecular testing solutions — from sample preparation to data interpretation.

Under its new parent, Ingenuity will continue to operate out of its offices in Redwood City, Calif., and retain all 120 current employees, while CEO Jake Leschly takes on new responsibilities within Qiagen's life science business unit.

Ingenuity will also continue to develop and offer products under its existing licensing scheme. Its portfolio includes a knowledgebase of curated genomic variants; Ingenuity Pathway Analysis, its web-based application for modeling and analyzing biological pathways; Ingenuity Variant Analysis, which selects clinically relevant genomic variants from NGS data (BI 1/13/2012); and Ingenuity iReport, its software for reporting the results of gene expression experiments from RNA-seq, microarray, and qPCR platforms.

Qiagen plans to incorporate content from Ingenuity's knowledgebase into a curated database that it sells with wet lab assays offered through its GeneGlobe portal — which provides access to hundreds of PCR- and NGS-based assay panels for exploring pathways and diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and central nervous system disorders. In total, GeneGlobe offers more than 60,000 annotated molecular assays.

Also, Qiagen later this year plans to begin offering an integrated workflow that will provide its customers with kits for sample and library prep, target enrichment, and sequencing, as well as informatics support. Its software component will include solutions that are currently being developed with German software-development firm SAP for sequence read alignment and variant calling (BI 7/6/2012) and Ingenuity's variant analysis and interpretation tools.

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