Qiagen in Three Words: Life Sciences Staple

Molecular biology, the study of biological molecules, has a wide variety of applications, from basic biological research and discovery to clinical diagnostics, with many uses in between. At the core of molecular biology are the biological molecules that are interrogated and analyzed. QIAGEN provides the products that enable the extraction and amplification of biological molecules for that analysis, helping researchers and clinicians to quickly, easily, and reproducibly move from sample to insight.

QIAGEN products are well known to people in the scientific and clinical communities as they are often the first step of an experiment or lab test. The company makes easy-to-use kits that provide all the reagents and separation devices to extract biological molecules from samples (tissues such as blood or saliva, soil, or even wastewater) and the PCR instruments to amplify those molecules, which are analyzed directly or further interrogated by other methods.

The company has divided its business into five pillars of adjacent products to help serve multiple applications. These pillars are:

Sample Technologies: Biomolecule extraction and purification kits

QIAcuity: Digital PCR system for research purposes

QIAstat-Dx: Clinical PCR system for smaller numbers of clinical samples

NeuMoDx: Highly automated clinical PCR for processing of large amounts of clinical samples

QuantiFERON: Tuberculosis testing and other infectious diseases

Wisely, it has centered its business on sample technologies and PCR instruments that serve the different needs of its users with the goal being to help users get from sample to insight quickly, accurately and reproducibly. PCR, an acronym for Polymerase Chain Reaction, is used to amplify a known biological molecule so it can be used for further analysis or to determine if a specific molecule is in any given sample. Some instruments are designed strictly for research purposes while others have passed through the regulatory processes to be used for clinical diagnosis. The instruments have different levels of automation and can accommodate different amounts of samples. This enables QIAGEN to support the needs of a research laboratory at a pharmaceutical company, a laboratory in a hospital, and a large clinical testing facility.

The company uses these five pillars to address a large variety of applications that serve different business applications. Aside from PCR and nucleic acid amplification, QIAGEN’s products support genomics and next generation sequencing (NGS), precision medicine, specifically as applied to oncology and women’s health, and forensics. The company also sells OEM reagents, bulk products that companies developing molecular diagnostic tests can purchase and resell as part of their testing kits.

The company follows the classic business model of selling an instrument and the consumables that are needed to run that instrument. Following this structure, 15% of its business is instrument sales while 85% is consumables.

QIAGEN’s mission is to help its customers move from sample to insight, so it provides more than just the sample-prep kits and the analytical instruments. It also offers digital products that help with the analysis and interpretation of results. The company acquired several bioinformatics companies that develop biological and medical databases of information and tools for data analysis. One such company, Ingenuity Systems, is a company where I worked for over a decade. The company maintains a structured database of biological information and software that uses that database to identify molecular connections and biological pathways that are relevant to a set of biological molecules input by the user. As a scientist, I have a hard time thinking about science without the use of those applications. Other acquisitions of companies with databases of biological and patient information include CLC Bio, BioBase, and N-of-One, strengthening its Digital Insights business. Given that interpretation of results is the most challenging and most important component of scientific research and clinical diagnosis, QIAGEN’s bioinformatics tools may often be overlooked and underappreciated by investors.