CENTOGENE expands ongoing development cooperation with Ministry of Health and Social Protection of the Population of Tajikistan (MoH) to now include COVID-19 testing
- CENTOGENE expands ongoing development cooperation with Ministry of Health and Social Protection of the Population of Tajikistan (MoH) to now include COVID-19 testing
- The project supports access to testing materials and laboratory devices for SARS-CoV-2 testing – funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and technical expertise, organizational support, and training provided by CENTOGENE
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. and ROSTOCK, Germany and BERLIN, Aug. 04, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Centogene N.V. (Nasdaq: CNTG), a commercial-stage company focused on rare diseases that transforms real-world clinical and genetic data into actionable information for patients, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies, announced today that it has expanded its ongoing development cooperation with the Ministry of Health and Social Protection of the Population of Tajikistan to now include SARS-CoV-2 testing.
The project will enable Tajikistan to increase their testing capacities – helping the country to identify and quarantine patients with a SARS-CoV-2 infection and hence, control infection chains to minimize the outbreak of COVID-19. In the framework of this not-for-profit project, the National Reference Laboratory (NRL) in Dushanbe has received reagents, laboratory devices, swabs, and transport systems for qPCR testing.
CENTOGENE will train the Tajik experts to conduct SARS-CoV-2 testing using Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and training tools in development by CENTOGENE scientists, with follow-up audiovisual consultations to address future questions and quality management related challenges.
“Building on our valuable experiences within the ongoing cooperation with CENTOGENE, we highly welcome this initiative to enhance COVID-19 diagnosis for patients in Tajikistan,” said Dr. Gafur Muhsinzoda, First Deputy Minister of Health in Tajikistan.
Prior to this initiative, CENTOGENE signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Health in July 2019 to cooperate in the field of rare diseases. The project consists of three cornerstones: training of Tajik doctors, pro bono diagnostic of patients and support to affected families with information, and access to patient networks. It is jointly funded by CENTOGENE and the develoPPP.de program of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ)).
Prof. Arndt Rolfs, CEO of CENTOGENE, stated, “This co-funding partnership represents an innovative way to work in close cooperation with the public sector – supporting countries with much needed help for pressing healthcare challenges. In the midst of recent obstacles, it is important to continue working together to increase testing efforts and diagnose patients at the earliest possible point.”
About CENTOGENE
CENTOGENE engages in diagnosis and research around rare diseases transforming real-world clinical and genetic data into actionable information for patients, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies. Our goal is to bring rationality to treatment decisions and to accelerate the development of new orphan drugs by using our extensive rare disease knowledge, including epidemiological and clinical data, as well as innovative biomarkers. CENTOGENE has developed a global proprietary rare disease platform based on our real-world data repository with approximately 3.0 billion weighted data points from over 530,000 patients representing over 120 different countries as of March 31, 2020.
The Company’s platform includes epidemiologic, phenotypic, and genetic data that reflects a global population, and also a biobank of these patients’ blood samples. CENTOGENE believes this represents the only platform that comprehensively analyzes multi-level data to improve the understanding of rare hereditary diseases, which can aid in the identification of patients and improve our pharmaceutical partners’ ability to bring orphan drugs to the market. As of March 31, 2020, the Company collaborated with 39 pharmaceutical partners covering over 45 different rare diseases.
Important Notice and Disclaimer
This press release contains statements that constitute “forward looking statements” as that term is defined in the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements that express the Company’s opinions, expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, assumptions or projections regarding future events or future results, in contrast with statements that reflect historical facts. Examples include discussion of our strategies, financing plans, growth opportunities and market growth. In some cases, you can identify such forward-looking statements by terminology such as “anticipate,” “intend,” “believe,” “estimate,” “plan,” “seek,” “project” or “expect,” “may,” “will,” “would,” “could” or “should,” the negative of these terms or similar expressions. Forward looking statements are based on management’s current beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to the Company. However, these forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of our performance, and you should not place undue reliance on such statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to many risks, uncertainties and other variable circumstances, such as negative worldwide economic conditions and ongoing instability and volatility in the worldwide financial markets, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business and results of operations, possible changes in current and proposed legislation, regulations and governmental policies, pressures from increasing competition and consolidation in our industry, the expense and uncertainty of regulatory approval, including from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, our reliance on third parties and collaboration partners, including our ability to manage growth and enter into new client relationships, our dependency on the rare disease industry, our ability to manage international expansion, our reliance on key personnel, our reliance on intellectual property protection, fluctuations of our operating results due to the effect of exchange rates or other factors. Such risks and uncertainties may cause the statements to be inaccurate and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements. Many of these risks are outside of the Company’s control and could cause its actual results to differ materially from those it thought would occur. The forward-looking statements included in this press release are made only as of the date hereof. The Company does not undertake, and specifically declines, any obligation to update any such statements or to publicly announce the results of any revisions to any such statements to reflect future events or developments, except as required by law.
For further information, please refer to the Risk Factors section in our Annual Report for the year ended December 31, 2019 on Form 20-F filed with the SEC on April 23, 2020 and other current reports and documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). You may obtain these documents by visiting EDGAR on the SEC website at www.sec.gov.
Media Contact: CENTOGENE Melissa Hall Corporate Communications press@centogene.com FTI Consulting Bridie Lawlor +1.917.929.5684 bridie.lawlor@fticonsulting.com
