Foundation Medicine Acquires Lexent Bio, Inc., to Accelerate Liquid Biopsy Research and Development, and Advance Cancer Care

Acquisition will expand Foundation Medicine’s multiomics capabilities, including the adoption of DNA methylation to evaluate cancer progression in broader patient populations

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Foundation Medicine, Inc., today announced that it has completed the acquisition of Lexent Bio, Inc., a precision oncology company located in California, developing novel multiomics liquid biopsy platforms to advance cancer care. This acquisition will accelerate Foundation Medicine’s research and development strategy and expand its existing liquid biopsy platforms to advance cancer care for patients. The technology developed by Lexent Bio complements Foundation Medicine’s existing efforts and partnerships aimed at developing advanced diagnostics for physicians, as well as genomically evaluating disease progression and informing treatment decisions at earlier stages of disease.

“Lexent Bio's platforms align well with our liquid biopsy research and development strategy, which ultimately aims to bring the latest research innovations into routine clinical use in metastatic disease and at potentially earlier stages of patient care,” said Cindy Perettie, chief executive officer at Foundation Medicine. “They bring with them an accomplished group of clinicians, scientists and engineers who share our patient-centric, science-first mission to transform cancer care. We’re thrilled to welcome them to our team and look forward to their contributions to our research and development efforts to deliver new breakthroughs that advance precision medicine and patient care.”

Lexent Bio's novel monitoring platform is currently in development and is based on low-pass whole genome sequencing (WGS) and DNA methylation analysis. Foundation Medicine plans to further incorporate WGS and methylation into new assay platforms to support treatment decision-making across all stages of disease. Methylation analysis has been shown to reveal important aspects of underlying cancer biology and allows oncologists to identify patients at high risk of disease progression, potentially intervene sooner and improve patient outcomes in earlier stages of disease.^1,2 These collective capabilities will enable the expansion of Foundation Medicine’s current tumor-informed personalized cancer monitoring initiatives into universal tumor-agnostic approaches in the future.

This technology adds to Foundation Medicine’s portfolio of tissue and liquid biopsy platforms and will aim to support new approaches for developing targeted therapies, from discovery research through clinical development. With this acquisition and the integration of Lexent Bio’s monitoring platform, Foundation Medicine will expand its capabilities to support adaptive clinical trial designs and accelerate therapeutic development in both early and late stage disease, ultimately bringing new options to oncologists and patients.

“Our team is passionate about changing the way we understand and treat cancer. We’ve spent years building a platform that, once developed and available, will help guide oncologists to identify patients at higher risk for disease progression, and to make better treatment decisions earlier in patient care,” said Ken Nesmith, co-founder of and chief executive officer at Lexent Bio. “The team is pleased to join Foundation Medicine and work collaboratively to bring these capabilities to physicians and their patients.”

About Foundation Medicine
Foundation Medicine is a molecular information company dedicated to a transformation in cancer care in which treatment is informed by a deep understanding of the genomic changes that contribute to each patient's unique cancer. The company offers a full suite of comprehensive genomic profiling assays to identify the molecular alterations in a patient’s cancer and match them with relevant targeted therapies, immunotherapies and clinical trials. Foundation Medicine’s molecular information platform aims to improve day-to-day care for patients by serving the needs of clinicians, academic researchers and drug developers to help advance the science of molecular medicine in cancer. For more information, please visit www.FoundationMedicine.com or follow Foundation Medicine on Twitter (@FoundationATCG).

Foundation Medicine® is a registered trademark of Foundation Medicine, Inc.

Source: Foundation Medicine

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¹ Koch, A., Joosten, S.C., Feng, Z. et al. Analysis of DNA methylation in cancer: location revisited. Nat Rev Clin Oncol 15, 459–466 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41571-018-0004-4
² Michalak, E.M., Burr, M.L., Bannister, A.J. et al. The roles of DNA, RNA and histone methylation in ageing and cancer. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 20, 573–589 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41580-019-0143-1