Industry News: QIAGEN and INOVIO expand collaboration to develop next-generation sequencing companion diagnostic for INOVIO’s VGX-3100 17 Mar 2021 QIAGEN and INOVIO Pharmaceuticals have announced an extension of their partnership with a new master collaboration agreement to develop liquid biopsy-based companion diagnostic products based on next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology to complement INOVIO’s therapies. The initial project in this expanded collaboration focuses on the co-development of a diagnostic test that identifies women who are most likely to benefit from clinical use of VGX-3100, INOVIO's immunotherapy to treat advanced cervical dysplasia associated with the human papillomavirus (HPV). QIAGEN’s bioinformatic expertise will further increase the predictive power of INOVIO’s preliminary biomarker signature – and the assay will now be developed for use on the Illumina NextSeq™ 550Dx platform, the first development based on a partnership QIAGEN and Illumina signed in October 2019.