BC Platforms, Euformatics and Oncompass Medicine have formed a partnership to bid for the development of standardized oncology workflows for a buyer consortium of seven leading hospitals based in Central Europe.

The buyer consortium, represented by the Medical University Graz, evaluated all proposals, and awarded a contract to the consortium of BC Platforms, Euformatics and Oncompass Medicine.

Instand-NGS4P

Instand-NGS4P is a H2020 funded project for improving cancer patients’ benefit from Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) by developing an integrated and standardized NGS workflow and integrating information from cancer gene testing, pharmacogenetics testing and e-medication in proper presentation to medical doctors to support therapy decision at bedside. The project started in January 2020 and has now evolved to a point where suppliers for design of the standardized NGS workflows have been selected after an open market consultation and call for tenders. The program will run until May 2025 with a total pre-commercial procurement budget of approximately 8 million euros.

During the open market consultation in 2021 BC Platforms, Euformatics and Oncompass Medicine decided to join forces and respond to the tender together to leverage the strengths of each partner and build a strong proposal, they state. The combination of existing IP and expertise in areas such as genomic data management, variant interpretation, NGS data quality control and precision oncology convinced the evaluators to award contracts to the partnership in both post-sequencing technical modules, namely bioinformatic analysis and integrated reporting.

“Instand-NGS4P program hits the sweet spot from our product development and expertise perspective. This is really a win-win since we can build on top of the existing omnomicsSUITE product family in close collaboration with leading European healthcare institutions. Having deployed several clinical solutions together with BC Platforms in North America, Europe and Asia, I am confident that the partnership will work well. Oncompass Medicine is a very welcome addition to the consortium, providing value beyond our capabilities,” says Tommi Kaasalainen, CEO of Euformatics, headquartered in Finland.

The first phase of the project starts immediately and the results of the first phase will be delivered in mid August 2022. The purchasing consortium will then evaluate the output of all phase 1 contractors and select the best ones to continue to phase 2. Similarly after the second phase there will be a competitive selection to award the final third phase contracts to eventually deploy and integrate in 2025 two standardized NGS workflows as the result of the Instand-NGS4P program.

Photo of Istvan Petak, Founder and CEO of Oncompass Medicine, Tommi Kaasalainen, CEO of Euformatics, and Tero Silvola, CEO of BC Platforms