Three years after buying a majority stake in Foundation Medicine for more than $1 billion as part of a research and development collaboration, Roche Pharmaceuticals has acquired the rest of the company in a $2.4 billion follow-on deal for the business, which selects cancer treatments for patients based on their genetic profile. It’s the latest in a series of companies Roche has acquired to add services and technology to the Big Pharma’s drug development business, particularly in cancer treatment.
Roche CEO Daniel O’Day said in a news release that his company would continue to preserve Foundation Medicines autonomy to support its innovative approach.
“This is important to our personalized 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.”
[Foundation Medicine Chairman Michael Pellini is speaking at the MedCity CONVERGE conference in Philadelphia July 11-12 next month. Click here for more information.]
Foundation Medicine CEO Troy Cox said the company would continue to collaborate with biopharma partners to provide access to its comprehensive genomic profiling assays.
The deal comes on the heels of Roche’s $1.9 billion acquisition oncology-focused EHR software developer Flatiron Health in February, and $1.7 billion acquisition of precision medicine business Ignyta.
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