Molecular Health and FALCO biosystems team up to provide genetic analysis services using MH Guide/BRCA and MH Guide/Mendel

MH Guide/BRCA and MH Guide/Mendel will assist doctors and human geneticists in making decisions about gene variant pathogenicity.

HEIDELBERG,
GERMANY – EQS Newswire – 2 March 2021 – Molecular Health GmbH announced today  that it has entered into an agreement with Kyoto-based FALCO biosystems Ltd. under which FALCO biosystems  will use the products MH Guide/BRCA and MH Guide/Mendel to evaluate inherited  genetic variants of BRCA1/2 and other heritable cancer-associated genes.

Inherited genetic variants can predispose an  individual to cancer. Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer (HBOC) Syndrome, for  example, is caused by pathogenic mutations in distinct genes such as BRCA1/2, MLH1, MSH6, PMS2,   respectively. Therefore, testing BRCA1/2  genes and other heritable cancer-associated genes is becoming increasingly important:  both to evaluate the affected patient’s individual risk of developing cancer^1,2,  and as a predictive biomarker and companion diagnostic test for certain drugs³.  Whereas MH Guide/BRCA detects variants in HBOC-associated genes, MH Guide/Mendel  can analyze large gene panels as well as whole-exome or whole-genome data, so  that many different hereditary diseases can be identified at once.

“With this collaboration in place, Japanese  patients will benefit from state-of-the-art genetic identification of inherited  diseases like Hereditary  Breast and Ovarian Cancer and many other diseases. This will allow sooner  diagnosis and potentially earlier therapeutic intervention”, said Christian  Meisel, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer at Molecular Health.

Under   the terms of this collaboration, FALCO biosystems will perform the next-generation   sequencing (NGS) process and variant identification using blood samples  provided by the patient. Molecular Health will then analyze the variant data
using MH Guide/BRCA or MH Guide/Mendel. To accurately distinguish benign from
pathogenic variants, MH uses an in-house proprietary database called MH Dataome, which integrates  the Japanese reference genome ToMMo 3.5KJPNv2 (MAF ≥ 1%) for improved variant  filtering and classification. Molecular Health gratefully acknowledges the  contribution of Tohoku Medical Megabank.

MH
Guide/BRCA and MH Guide/Mendel are part of MH Guide, a registered in-vitro
diagnostic (IVD) medical device in Europe.