Deal centered on Foundation’s NGS-based test is fifth major pharma company deal.

Sanofi and Foundation Medicine signed a collaboration agreement under which the latter will use its genomic sequencing and analytics expertise to identify genetic biomarkers and potential companion diagnostics for use alongside certain Sanofi anticancer drug candidates. Foundation says the deal is its fifth major pharma company alliance.

“Our unique capability to correlate clinical data with specific genomic alterations has enabled these innovative partnerships in genomic discovery for cancer treatment,” notes MIcheal J. Pellini, M.D., president and CEO at Foundation. “Targeted cancer therapeutics routinely demonstrate improved clinical safety and efficacy when matched with the patients most likely to benefit, and we believe this alliance with Sanofi will help catalyze the development of their targeted candidates.”

Developed to aid treatment decision making, Foundation’s comprehensive cancer diagnostic test uses next-generation sequencing to analyze clinical FFPE specimens and identify alterations in over 200 cancer-related genes.

The partnership with Sanofi follows just six weeks or so after the firm inked a collaboration with Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development (J&JPRD) focused on using Foundation’s clinical cancer genomic test to identify biomarkers that will support J&JPRD oncology clinical development programs.

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