GeneOak Medicine and Twist Bioscience Announce Strategic Collaboration to Advance High-Standard Precision Oncology Diagnostics in China

On April 8, 2021, Beijing Oakxin Biotechnology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Jinxiang Medicine”) entered into a strategic cooperation agreement with U.S.-based Twist Bioscience Corporation (hereinafter referred to as “Twist”). Under this partnership, Jinxiang Medicine will utilize Twist’s NGS targeted enrichment and library preparation tools in its diagnostic products, aiming to promote high-standard development in China’s precision medicine sector.

Under the agreement, Twist will provide Golden Oak Medical with globally leading, high-quality products and services to ensure that its testing quality consistently remains at an internationally advanced level. The two parties will collaborate closely based on the principles of “mutual benefit and win-win outcomes, complementary advantages” to deliver higher-quality precision medical services to cancer patients in China.

As understanding of oncology deepens and genomic technologies advance, tumor diagnosis is evolving from a broad-brush approach to precision medicine. Companion diagnostics (CDx) are a key enabler of targeted therapy and the realization of precise treatment. Underpinning this substantial demand is a vast market size.

Guoyuan Securities estimates that the market size for companion diagnostics has already approached RMB 4 billion across just six cancer types, including lung and gastric cancers. With further increases in product penetration rates and the discovery of more therapeutic targets and their corresponding targeted therapies, the companion diagnostics market is expected to expand further.

Golden Oak Medical is a “dual high-tech” enterprise driven by innovation in its full-process system. Headquartered in the Zhongguancun National Independent Innovation Demonstration Zone in Beijing, it operates testing and R&D centers in Beijing and Tianjin, with a total area of 5,000 square meters.

The company provides clinical solutions for precision oncology centered on genomics, leveraging its independently developed big data analytics platform for genetic information.

Since its inception, Jinxiang Medicine has focused on the development of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology. Compared with single-gene testing methods, NGS enables simultaneous evaluation of multiple genes across numerous samples, allowing for multiple independent analyses to be conducted in parallel, thereby saving time and reducing costs. Furthermore, compared with broader approaches such as whole-genome sequencing, targeted capture-based high-throughput sequencing generates a smaller, more manageable volume of data, facilitating easier analysis.

As one of the few NGS medical service companies leading in both solid tumors and hematologic malignancies, Jinxiang Medicine has established unique brand advantages in lung cancer, gastrointestinal cancers, urological cancers, and hematologic malignancies. It has launched more than 30 testing products covering early diagnosis and screening, hereditary risk assessment, companion diagnostics for targeted and immunotherapies, tumor diagnostic subtyping, prognostic evaluation, and dynamic monitoring across multiple cancer types. Endorsed by numerous clinical and laboratory experts in oncology, the company currently serves over 500 hospitals.

Beyond its technological strengths, Golden Oak Medicine has earned widespread customer recognition due to its superior testing quality. “Quality is the lifeline of an enterprise, allowing for no ambiguity whatsoever,” Cao Shanbai, founder of Golden Oak Medicine, has repeatedly emphasized in external communications. It is reported that the company’s quality control standards far exceed industry benchmarks, with its products achieving perfect scores in all domestic and international quality assessments.

This collaboration with Twist is primarily aimed at further enhancing product quality. What sets Twist’s next-generation sequencing (NGS)-related products apart is their unparalleled uniformity, along with rigorous quality control (QC) performed prior to release, which maximizes batch-to-batch performance consistency to meet the high standards required for clinical testing. As product quality continues to improve, Jinxiang Medicine is not only able to provide high-quality testing services to clinicians and patients but also further solidifies its competitive advantage.

Certainly, the collaboration between the two parties extends beyond this. Reportedly, by leveraging Jinxiang Medicine’s expertise in tumor genomics and big data analytics, alongside Twist Bioscience’s scalable manufacturing capabilities, this partnership will not only provide more solutions for clinical testing services but also enhance clinical test performance through the application of high-quality raw materials in the development of NGS-based IVD kits, thereby driving the field of precision oncology in China toward higher standards.

Dr. Lou Feng, CTO and Co-Founder of Jinxiang Medicine, stated, “Through our partnership with Twist Bioscience, Jinxiang Medicine gains access to globally leading high-throughput, high-quality DNA synthesis products. Twist understands the critical importance of superior and stable reagent performance in leveraging genomic analysis to inform clinical treatment. We are delighted to integrate Twist’s NGS-related products into our portfolio. As NGS testing becomes a more mainstream and widely adopted technology for enabling precision medicine, we believe Jinxiang Medicine’s products will see broader application, positively transforming patient care and helping to reduce healthcare costs in China.”

“We are delighted to partner with Jinxiang Medicine, one of the leading companies in China’s precision oncology testing industry, with established expertise in both solid tumors and hematologic malignancies,” said Dr. Emily M. Leproust, CEO and Co-founder of Twist Bioscience. “Jinxiang Medicine has extensive experience and a remarkable track record in translating genetic testing technologies into clinical applications. Twist is honored to integrate our NGS solutions into Jinxiang Medicine’s product portfolio. As Jinxiang Medicine expands into the IVD sector, we are confident that this collaboration will deliver superior testing products to cancer patients in China.”