Roche to pay $2.4bn for remainder of Foundation Medicine

Switzerland-based Roche has agreed to pay $2.4 billion to acquire the remainder of Foundation Medicine, a molecular and genomic analysis company headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The deal, which was announced on Tuesday, June 19, is aimed at enhancing Roche’s development of personalised medicines and care for patients with cancer.

Roche paid $1 billion to take a majority interest in Foundation Medicine in January 2015 and vowed to provide more than $150 million of funding to accelerate new product development initiatives.

Foundation Medicine offers comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) assays to identify the molecular alterations in a patient’s cancer and match them with relevant targeted therapies, immunotherapies and clinical trials.

Daniel O’Day, CEO of Roche, said: “This is important to our personalised healthcare strategy as we believe molecular insights and the broad availability of high quality comprehensive genomic profiling are key enablers for the development of, and access to, new cancer treatments.”

Troy Cox, CEO of Foundation Medicine, said that the two companies share the philosophy that every cancer patient should have access to personalised care that is informed by validated molecular information.

“Joining forces with Roche as an independent operating company allows Foundation Medicine to continue its collaboration with Roche, as well as our biopharma partners, to drive ubiquitous access to CGP testing and innovative data services,” he added.

Foundation Medicine will continue operating as a separate entity after the transaction has been completed, which is expected to be in the second half of 2018.

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