Qiagen has announced a first-in-kind collaboration with Penn State University in the United States to create a shared research and education facility for the fast-developing microbiome sciences.

The university-industry partnership will serve as a beacon for this field by investigating research opportunities that address challenges and research gaps facing the microbiome, which involves the research into a community of microorganisms that can be found living together in any given environment, including the human body.

In doing so, this new partnership will provide Qiagen with a site to support the development of new products as a testing centre. It is also designed to provide vital industry research and training opportunities for next-generation scientists. This includes an internship programme for graduate students from Penn State at Qiagen laboratories at the European operational headquarters in Hilden, Germany, and helps them prepare for careers in the biotechnology industry.

Among the various projects in this partnership, the team will support the worldwide science education programme “Discover the Microbes Within! The Wolbachia Project”.

Microbiome research aims to explore the relationships between microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi and viruses, and their hosts. It can help to better understand the microbiome’s impact on health, diseases and ecological processes in order to develop novel diagnostic solutions and therapeutic strategies.

The flagship project at the One Health Microbiome Center (OHMC) at Penn State’s Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences will see Qiagen provide instruments and kits for preparing and processing microbial samples.