NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Foundation Medicine said today that it has won a nationwide contract from the US Department of Veterans Affairs National Precision Oncology Program to provide comprehensive genomic profiling for eligible veterans with advanced cancer.
The estimated contract award is $111.5 million over an anticipated period of five years, according to the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company.
The contract covers all of Foundation Medicine's tests, including FoundationOne CDx, FoundationOne Liquid, and FoundationOne Heme, which provide information about genomic alterations to match patients to targeted therapies, immunotherapies, and clinical trials.
"It is imperative that every advanced cancer patient has access to this information and we are privileged to provide our tests to the people who served our country," said Cindy Perettie, CEO of Foundation Medicine, which is owned by Roche, in a statement.
According to a spokesperson for the Department of Veterans Affairs, the goal of the contract is to provide tumor sequencing for all veterans. "A national contract facilitates ordering from all facilities and provides a uniform reporting standard so the results can be in the record in an established format," she said. "Finally, it streamlines the information flow to allow rapid function of a virtual molecular tumor board."
More than 60 VA hospitals currently provide specimens for sequencing, according to the spokesperson, and the department is striving to expand this to all centers providing cancer care. "We are specifically targeting metastatic prostate cancer, due to the prevalence of actionable results," she said.