GERMANTOWN, Maryland, and HILDEN, Germany, – QIAGEN N.V. (NASDAQ: QGEN; Frankfurt Prime Standard: QIA) today announced plans to significantly expand its existing portfolio of molecular assays used in next-generation sequencing (NGS) during 2013 as part of its expansion into this fast-growing market and ambitions to provide an ecosystem of products and services designed to drive greater use of this breakthrough technology in clinical research and diagnostics.

QIAGEN is exhibiting its NGS products at the European Society of Human Genetics Conference from June 8-11 in Paris.

The current portfolio of nine GeneReadTM DNAseq panels launched in late 2012 is being expanded to approximately 20 during the course of 2013. QIAGEN is leveraging its deep molecular content and assay portfolio to create these new gene panels for targeted NGS analysis based on the GeneGlobe portfolio of more than 60,000 annotated molecular assays. Initial customer demand has been very strong for these products, which are “universal” and are designed to be used on any NGS platform, and also to integrate seamlessly into the sample-to-result NGS workflow that includes the QIAGEN GeneReader platform targeted for placements to select customer groups in 2013.

Since sequencing of entire human genomes requires considerable resources and time, users of NGS technology in clinical research and diagnostics often prefer to perform targeted sequencing of clinically relevant genes based on focused gene panels of interest. This expanding portfolio of products addresses the urgent needs of customers to efficiently generate relevant NGS data by providing fast turnaround time, low DNA input requirements and quality control standards, all of which result in more cost-effective, accurate and reproducible results from each sequencing run.

QIAGEN’s current offering includes eight focused and curated NGS gene panels for a range of cancers –

breast, colon, liver, lung, ovarian, prostate, gastric and blood – and each covering approximately 20 different genes of interest. QIAGEN also already offers a comprehensive cancer panel covering 124 different genes. The panels being launched will focus on various cancers as well as new disease areas, and QIAGEN intends to continuously expand this portfolio with new panel offerings.

In addition to the workflow benefits of these panels, QIAGEN is integrating access to the cloud-based Variant AnalysisTMsoftware acquired with Ingenuity Systems in early 2013 to its gene panels, enabling customers to rapidly translate rawsequencing data into actionable results. This biological interpretation solution enables customers to rapidly identify and prioritize genetic variants, accessing the most current and advanced interpretations of genomic data.

One of the early users of QIAGEN’s GeneRead DNAseq gene panels is Prof. Dr. Reinhard Büttner, head of the Institute for Pathology at the University of Cologne, a leading European institution for NGS-based lung cancer testing that has been evaluating QIAGEN’s gene panels for lung cancer and leukemia.

“We received high-quality reads during our sequencing runs with these gene panels and appreciated the fact that the primer sets were validated by QIAGEN. Also, easy sample preparation and quantification makes these products flexible and easy to integrate into existing workflows,” Dr. Büttner said.

As part of its expansion into NGS, QIAGEN also recently launched a full range of sample and library preparation products for NGS. For example, NGS analysis often is limited by the small amount of sample available, a challenge that labs can overcome using the REPLI-g® Single Cell Kit, which is designed to deliver unbiased amplification of genomic DNA from single cells. Among the early adopters of this technology is BGI (formerly Beijing Genome Institute), the world’s largestgenomics center, which provides sequencing and bioinformatics services for medical, agricultural and environmental applications.

“Our ambition is to offer an ecosystem – a complete portfolio of products and services – to make next-generationsequencing technology more effective, robust and scalable for adoption in clinical research and diagnostics,” said Dr. Dietrich Hauffe, Senior Vice President, Life Sciences Business Area of QIAGEN. “Customers using NGS technologies know that high-quality pre-analytical solutions are critical for achieving outstanding sequencing results. Our focus in the early stages of serving the NGS marketplace is on delivering the most reliable, sensitive solutions available. We’re very encouraged by the feedback of our early customers and will further expand our offering to address the requirements of laboratories in clinical research and healthcare.”