NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Health technology company Tempus announced today that it will provide sequencing and analysis services to Rush University Medical Center to help advance its personalized cancer treatment efforts.
Tempus offers informatics tools for combining molecular data with phenotypic and therapeutic data to to understand how patients will respond to particular treatments, and runs a lab that conducts both whole-genome and whole-exome sequencing. The company also offers two targeted panels — a 600-gene panel that covers immediately actionable mutations and one that covers about 1,700 cancer-linked genes.
"In personalized cancer care, we learn about a person's genetic makeup and how his or her tumor grows, then use this data to try to find prevention, screening, and treatment strategies that may be more effective for each individual," Robert DeCresce, acting director of the Rush Cancer Center, said in a statement. "This approach also enables us to find treatments that cause fewer side effects than the standard options. By performing genetic tests on the cancer cells and on normal cells, we may be able to customize treatment to each patient's needs."
Specific terms of the deal were not disclosed.
In addition to its partnership with Rush, Tempus has recently formed alliances with Northwestern's Lurie Cancer Center, the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, and the University of Michigan.