NEW YORK – Genetron Health said on Monday that it has entered into a strategic partnership with reproductive health firm Yikon Genomics.
Financial and other terms of the deal between the two Chinese firms were not disclosed, but Genetron said it expects the partnership to contribute to its 2021 revenues.
Under the agreement, Shanghai-based Yikon will have exclusive rights to use Genetron's benchtop S5 sequencing instrument for reproductive health applications in China. In addition, the companies will work together to develop and register new tests for the platform, Genetron said in a statement.
Beijing-based Genetron will also support Yikon's commercialization efforts. Yikon currently provides pre-pregnancy, prenatal, and genetic disease testing for more than 400 hospital partners across China.
The S5 next-generation sequencing platform, which was approved by China's National Medical Products Administration in 2019, is based on Thermo Fisher Scientific's Ion GeneStudio S5 sequencer and has previously been used in various oncology settings.
In July, the company received CE marking for its eight-gene lung cancer sequencing test running on the S5 platform.