Bristol-Myers Squibb Enters Collaboration To Leverage Foundation Medicine’s Molecular Information Platform

By Bio-IT World Staff

April 3, 2017 | Bristol-Myers Squibb and Foundation Medicine announced a collaboration that will leverage Foundation Medicine’s comprehensive genomic profiling and molecular information solutions to identify predictive biomarkers such as Tumor Mutational Burden (TMB) and Microsatellite Instability (MSI) in patients enrolled across clinical trials investigating Bristol-Myers Squibb’s cancer immunotherapies. Biomarkers can be used to characterize a tumor and the tumor microenvironment, which may reveal immune-related mechanisms predictive of how a patient may respond to immunotherapy.

Cancer immunotherapy works by helping the immune system mount an anti-cancer response, a process that depends in part on the recognition of cancer-specific proteins called neoantigens. Higher levels of tumor mutations have been shown to correlate to the number of neoantigens, and therefore may help identify patients more likely to respond to cancer immunotherapies. Foundation Medicine’s approach utilizing its FoundationOne assay combines comprehensive genomic profiling with its advanced and proprietary algorithms to measure biomarkers, including TMB and MSI, without the need for whole exome sequencing.

“Translational medicine research is critical to further our understanding of cancer biology and to identify which patient populations are most likely to derive benefit from our Immuno-Oncology agents,” Fouad Namouni, head of Development, Oncology, Bristol-Myers Squibb, wrote in a statement. “We believe this collaboration with Foundation Medicine will help us better understand the relation of genomic approaches to immunotherapy efficacy across a number of different tumor types and immunotherapy agents.”