Centogene and Pfizer Collaborate for Rare Disease Drug Development

Centogene and Pfizer have entered into a collaborative agreement that will allow Pfizer access to Centogene’s data repository, which may be used in the discovery and validation of novel genetic and biochemical targets for the potential development of new therapies for rare diseases.   

The agreement comes just one week after Centogene raised $56 million in an initial public offering on the Nasdaq Global Market.

“With what we believe to be the world’s largest data repository of epidemiologic, phenotypic and clinical data in orphan diseases, Centogene is fueling the global knowledge base of rare disease patient populations,” said Arndt Rolfs, CEO of Centogene. “The potential for furthering the understanding of rare disease is extremely important for patients around the world, and we hope that today’s collaboration agreement will help lead to better diagnosis and potential treatments for patients with rare diseases.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Centogene and Pfizer will work together to mine the data repository and jointly agree to any collaborative research projects designed to substantiate results of data mining. Centogene will receive an upfront payment and will be eligible for additional research payments under any future collaborative research projects. Individual-level data from the repository will be managed, protected and shared with Pfizer in compliance with international data privacy regulations.

Centogene’s rare disease data repository integrates relevant structured and unstructured patient data, including clinical information; health records; and genetic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic data. It also includes longitudinal data such as biomarker or patient recorded outcome, as well as diagnostic workflow data.

Centogene believes its genetic testing platform comprehensively analyzes multi-level data to improve the understanding of rare hereditary diseases, which it says can accelerate patients’ diagnostic odyssey and improve its pharmaceutical partners’ ability to bring orphan drugs to the market. As of August 31, 2019, the company collaborated with more than 35 pharmaceutical partners for more than 30 different rare diseases. The company opened its first U.S. laboratory in 2018 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Photo: Arndt Rolfs, CEO of Centogene

Author: Rare Daily Staff