Bayer to work with Foundation Medicine on selecting cancer patients

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Bayer struck a collaboration deal with Roche’s Foundation Medicine Inc. to develop test kits for genetic sequencing of tumor cells to identify cancer patients that benefit from Bayer’s Vitrakvi drug.

Vitrakvi, which Bayer acquired from Eli Lilly’s Loxo Oncology, has been shown to shrink tumors in about 1 percent of patients across a range 24 different cancer types. Identifying those patients requires advanced genetic diagnostic tools.