Agilent Technologies and Burning Rock Sign Agreement on Molecular Diagnostics

Agilent Technologies Inc. and Burning Rock have signed an agreement under which Burning Rock will develop cancer diagnostics in China based on the Agilent SureSelect target enrichment system.
 
Agilent is a provider of target enrichment for next-generation DNA sequencing. Target enrichment saves researchers time and resources by enabling them to focus on regions of interest rather than looking at the entire genome. Burning Rock is a company focused on developing cancer diagnostics based on DNA sequencing.
 
“As the leader in molecular cancer diagnosis in China, Burning Rock is very pleased to partner with Agilent, a global leader in diagnostics and genomics,” said Yusheng Han, the founder and CEO of Burning Rock. “Collaboration between our two companies will provide additional high-quality molecular diagnostic solutions based on next-generation sequencing, including non-invasive testing, relapse monitoring, early-stage diagnosis and cancer susceptibility.”
 
Fast and accurate cancer diagnoses are becoming increasingly important in China, with its extensive population and growing focus on advancing human health.
 
“We are excited to partner with Burning Rock to accelerate accurate diagnosis of cancer for patients in China,” said Jacob Thaysen, president of Agilent’s Diagnostics and Genomics Group. “We believe that target enrichment and next-generation sequencing have a vital role to play in personalizing medicine and ultimately delivering treatments tailored to the individual. This is especially so for complex diseases such as cancer.”
 
Burning Rock plans to register its molecular diagnostic kit with the China Food and Drug Administration. The company believes the kit could become the first CFDA-approved capture sequencing-based cancer diagnostic assay in the Chinese market.
 
Burning Rock is headquartered in Beijing, China, and is a diagnostics company committed to the field of molecular testing to improve oncology patients’ individualized treatment guidance. It offers research and commercialized clinical laboratory services mainly through bioinformatics on next-generation sequencing platforms. Burning Rock has a  molecular and pathological examination platform and has developed a series of testing solutions.
 
Agilent Technologies Inc. is a global laboratory partner for customers in the life sciences, diagnostics and applied chemical markets. Agilent works with customers in more than 100 countries, providing instruments, software, services and consumables for the entire laboratory workflow. The company generated revenue of $4.04 billion in fiscal 2015 and employs about 12,000 people worldwide.