Centogene & Twist Bioscience to Develop Advanced Sequencing Tools to Make Genetic Testing Rapidly Accessible for More Patients With Rare Diseases

Centogene N.V. and Twist Bioscience Corporation recently announced they have signed a contract to collaborate on the development and commercialization of custom assay kits for rare diseases. The resulting products will be designed to make genetic testing more accessible to patients and further drive the understanding of rare diseases. Financial details were not disclosed.

“We are excited to be working together with Twist as we seek to enable the most timely diagnosis for rare disease patients around the world,” said Andrin Oswald, MD, Chief Executive Officer at Centogene. “Not only will this help to provide patients with quicker and more comprehensive answers today, but it will generate insights to advance the precision medicine of tomorrow.”

The product offering will combine Centogene’s rare disease diagnostic expertise powered by the world’s largest Bio/Databank of its kind with Twist Bioscience’s library preparation and target enrichment capabilities to deliver multiple assays for rare disease diagnosis and analysis. The aim is to increase genetic testing options for the one in 15 individuals that are diagnosed with a rare disease each year. Additionally, the insights generated through these products will augment the Bio/Databank on rare diseases and may contribute to the discovery and development of novel therapeutics to treat rare diseases in the future.

“Twist continues to deliver science-driven tools to enable the accurate identification of rare diseases,” said Emily M. Leproust, PhD, CEO, and Co-Founder of Twist Bioscience. “We look forward to combining our robust NGS tools with Centogene’s rare disease insights to truly deliver advanced solutions for research professionals globally.”

This agreement represents another significant step forward for Centogene’s mission to drive novel insights and enable the cure of 100 rare diseases within the next 10 years. For more information, visit https://www.centogene.com/virtual-investor-event.

Twist Bioscience is a leading and rapidly growing synthetic biology and genomics company that has developed a disruptive DNA synthesis platform to industrialize the engineering of biology. The core of the platform is a proprietary technology that pioneers a new method of manufacturing synthetic DNA by “writing” DNA on a silicon chip. Twist is leveraging its unique technology to manufacture a broad range of synthetic DNA-based products, including synthetic genes, tools for next-generation sequencing (NGS) preparation, and antibody libraries for drug discovery and development. Twist is also pursuing longer-term opportunities in digital data storage in DNA and biologics drug discovery. Twist makes products for use across many industries including healthcare, industrial chemicals, agriculture and academic research.

Centogene engages in diagnosis and research around rare diseases transforming real-world clinical, genetic, and multiomic data to diagnose, understand, and treat rare diseases. Our goal is to bring rationality to treatment decisions and to accelerate the development of new orphan drugs by using our extensive rare disease knowledge and data. Centogene has developed a global proprietary rare disease platform based on our real-world data repository with over 3.9 billion weighted data points from approximately 600,000 patients representing over 120 different countries.

The company’s platform includes epidemiologic, phenotypic, and genetic data that reflects a global population, as well as a biobank of patients’ blood samples and cell cultures. Centogene believes this represents the only platform focused on comprehensive analysis of multi-level data to improve the understanding of rare hereditary diseases. It allows for better identification and stratification of patients and their underlying diseases to enable and accelerate discovery, development, and access to orphan drugs. As of December 31, 2020, the company collaborated with over 30 pharmaceutical partners.