QIAGEN today announced it has completed the acquisition of Verogen, a leader in the use of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies to drive the future of human identification (HID) and forensic investigation.
Verogen, a privately held company founded in 2017 and based in San Diego, supports the global human identification community with NGS tools and professional services to help resolve criminal and missing-persons cases. QIAGEN and Verogen have been commercialization partners since announcing a distribution agreement in June 2021.
QIAGEN, which in the late 1990s launched the first commercial kits to purify DNA from forensic casework samples, already has a leading position in the HID/ forensics market. QIAGEN’s sample collection and preparation kits, genetic testing analysis, and workflow automation products are used around the world by forensic science laboratories and criminal investigators.
“Bringing together Verogen and QIAGEN creates a unique opportunity to better help investigators and researchers to advance forensic science and to find missing persons, accurately identify suspects and exonerate the innocent,” said Thierry Bernard, CEO of QIAGEN. “The power of NGS has created so many applications that were not possible before, and its use in forensics is another opportunity for QIAGEN to provide the most complete workflow and help improve the lives of people around the world.”
“We are proud to take our successful partnership with QIAGEN to the next level in a combination that we believe creates significant advantages for all stakeholders,” said Brett Williams, CEO of Verogen. “This step will expand the value of Verogen’s portfolio to forensics customers and investigative agencies, and further drive the adoption of NGS to foster advances in justice worldwide.”
Human identification DNA techniques have evolved greatly over the past few decades, helping to meet huge challenges like in the aftermaths of wars and natural disasters, as well as to support advances in criminal justice. As just one example, the International Commission on Missing Persons in the Netherlands to date has profiled more than 44,000 bone samples and made more than 18,000 identifications – all processed using QIAGEN chemistry and kits.
However, the limitations of today’s broadly used workflows based on short-tandem-repeat (STR) analyses using capillary electrophoresis (CE) technology impede matches in an estimated 60-85% of traditional searches. This has resulted in a backlog of about 1 million unsolved cases in the U.S. alone.
Law enforcement, military and other forensic experts around the world increasingly look to NGS for its unprecedented genetic insights, such as allowing investigators to infer unique attributes like hair and eye color and biogeographical ancestry.
Verogen’s sequencing and analysis solutions are designed for use on the MiSeq FGx Sequencing System from Illumina, Inc. With this acquisition, QIAGEN gains exclusive distribution rights for this version of the MiSeq sequencer designed specifically for forensics applications. More than 300 MiSeq FGx Sequencing Systems have been placed to date, marking a strong entry into this market segment. The Verogen portfolio of kits for use on this sequencer includes the ForenSeq suite of kits including DNA Signature Prep, Imagen, Kintelligence and MainstAY product lines, all providing forensics experts with better answers to help solve the most complex unresolved cases.
QIAGEN also gains full access to Verogen’s pioneering GEDmatch database and GEDmatch PRO portal. GEDmatch allows users to upload genetic profiles created by other genealogy sites in order to expand the search for familial links; it currently contains more than 1.8 million genealogical profiles and continues to grow. GEDmatch PRO is designed to support police and forensic teams with investigative comparisons to data uploaded by consenting GEDmatch users.
Press release from QIAGEN.