AstraZeneca ans Foundation Medicine have collaborated to develop a new companion diagnostic assay for Lynparza (olaparib) oral poly ADP-ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor.
The companion diagnostic will allow physicians to find those patients most likely to benefit from AstraZeneca’s PARP inhibitor.
Lynparza exploits tumour DNA repair pathway deficiencies to preferentially kill cancer cells.
In the US, it received approval to treat patients with germline BRCA-mutated advanced ovarian cancer. It is approved in the European Union for the treatment of platinum-sensitive relapsed BRCA-mutated high-grade serous epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube or primary peritoneal cancer.
As part of the deal, Foundation Medicine will develop and market a regulatory approved product utilising the Quality Systems Regulations (QSR) compliant version of its FoundationOne genomic profiling platform.
The assay will discover multiple classes of genomic alterations across a range of genes involved in homologous recombination repair (HRR).
AstraZeneca global medicine lead Nina Mojas said: "This agreement supports the broad development programme for our first-in-class PARP inhibitor, Lynparza.
"Utilising Foundation Medicine’s leading capabilities in molecular information will help our work to assess the potential of the medicine to address unmet patient need across a number of cancers driven by DNA repair deficiencies, including and – significantly – beyond the BRCA mutations."
Foundation Medicine president and COO Steven Kafka said: "Following our new master collaboration agreement with AstraZeneca, we are pleased to launch this first strategic initiative to support and advance the development of Lynparza in a number of cancers."