Qiagen, a global leader in providing sample to insight solutions, announced it has been awarded a $3.4 million contract by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to increase the production capacity for consumables used on its NeuMoDx 96 and 288 integrated PCR testing systems at a site in Ann Arbor.
The grant was awarded to the Venlo, Netherlands-based company by the U.S. Department of Defense on behalf of and in coordination with the HHS. The Ann Arbor facility is using the company’s NeuMoDx technology to produce COVID-19 tests. The platform offers a combination of speed, flexibility, throughput, and ease of use for molecular diagnostics testing, including laboratory-developed tests.
Qiagen expects to scale up production to more than 16 million tests per year from the current 10 million by the end of March 2022.
“These U.S. government contracts and capacity expansions are a testament to the crucial role of PCR testing in the fight against COVID-19 and their increasing value to improving outcomes to patients,” says Jean-Pascal Viola, senior vice president and head of the molecular diagnostics business area and corporate business development at Qiagen.
“Qiagen is increasing its flexible production capabilities to ensure the availability of our PCR testing solutions for COVID-19 and other diseases where they are needed most.”
This contract follows another DOD and HHS contract for approximately $600,000 for Qiagen to expand production capacity for chemical reagents. The company’s site at Beverly, Mass., is the center of the company’s reagent manufacturing for other OEMs in the molecular testing market, including for COVID-19 tests.
