Dako and Quintiles Form Alliance to Speed Development of Personalized Medicine

Dako and Quintiles announced a strategic alliance to advance personalized medicine by collaborating on the co-development of targeted therapies and companion diagnostics.

Under the non-exclusive alliance, Dako and Quintiles will offer integrated drug-diagnostic development services and companion diagnostic products. The first such collaboration will support AstraZeneca in the development of one of its leading oncology compounds.

“Quintiles and Dako share the same goals for speed, quality and efficiency,” said Thomas Wollman, Senior Vice President, Quintiles Global Central Laboratories. “By pairing our core competencies in translational medicine, biomarker discovery and managing clinical trials with Dako’s expertise in companion diagnostics, we can help physician investigators select the right patients for the right clinical trials.”

As part of the alliance, Dako will develop cancer diagnostic tests, and Quintiles will conduct the tests as part of the clinical validation. Both Dako and Quintiles will continue to work independently with bio pharmaceutical companies and service providers in the industry.

“I’m excited about this collaboration. It is designed to help biopharma companies streamline the development of safer, more effective targeted therapies,” said Dako CEO Lars Holmkvist. “By combining highly accurate, reliable diagnostic tests and results with the proper management of critical patient data, we can help companies advance their oncology therapies more rapidly – with the ultimate goal of benefiting patients.”

Today, Quintiles develops proprietary and novel biomarker tests analyzing genes and proteins that affect cancer cell growth and mutation, and performs these assays at labs in the United States, Scotland and China. Quintiles has the largest and now entirely CAP-accredited central laboratory network in the world, with wholly owned facilities in the United States, Europe, South Africa, India, China, Singapore and Japan, and a tightly controlled network of affiliate laboratories in Argentina and Brazil.

Dako is constantly looking for opportunities to improve cancer diagnostics. This includes forming partnerships with companies with complementing technologies as well as entering into collaborations with pharmaceutical companies to develop diagnostic tests for specific therapies. Dako has expanded its reach into the emerging markets and opened subsidiaries in China and Brazil earlier this year.