Roche to pay more than US$1b for majority stake in tumour-testing company

New York

THE Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche said on Monday that it would acquire a majority of the tumour-testing company Foundation Medicine for more than US$1 billion, in a deal aimed at improving both cancer treatment and drug development.

Foundation is the leader in the growing area of sequencing the genes of tumour samples, looking for mutations that can help predict which drug will be most effective for a particular patient.