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Foundation Medicine, Eli Lilly Ink CDx Development Deal for Retevmo

NEW YORK – Roche's Foundation Medicine will develop tissue- and blood-based tests for use as companion diagnostics for Eli Lilly's Retevmo (selpercatinib) and other therapies in its R&D group Loxo Oncology's pipeline, the companies announced on Wednesday.

The partnership will initially explore the use of next-generation sequencing-based FoundationOne CDx for adult patients with metastatic rearranged transfection fusion across tumor types who may be eligible for RET inhibitor Retevmo in the US and European Union.

"This broad partnership will tap into our portfolio of end to end solutions to generate meaningful evidence and help optimize Lilly’s therapy development, and ultimately bring more targeted treatment options to cancer patients," Sanket Agrawal, Foundation's chief biopharma business officer, said in a statement.

Eli Lilly's Retevmo was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in May 2020 for three RET-driven cancer indications: RET fusion-positive metastatic non-small cell lung cancer; RET-mutant advanced or metastatic medullary thyroid cancer that requires systemic therapy; and RET fusion-positive thyroid cancer that requires systemic therapy and has stopped responding to radioactive iodine therapy.

FoundationOne CDx, meantime, has 26 companion diagnostic claims and two group claims across 28 targeted therapies, while FoundationOne Liquid CDx has nine companion diagnostic claims across eight targeted therapies.

Financial and other terms of the collaboration were not disclosed.

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