BC Platforms, Euformatics and Oncompass Medicine form a partnership to develop oncology NGS workflows for buyer consortium of seven major European hospitals

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 ~ 8 million euros.

During the open market consultation in 2021 BC Platforms, Euformatics and Oncompass Medicine decided to join forces and answer to the tender together to leverage the strengths of each partner and build a strong proposal. 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.

Kurt Zatloukal, Professor of Pathology at the Medical University Graz comments “Driven by patient and clinical needs, innovative NGS workflows from sample-pre-analytics to medical decision making will be developed in the program by the leading European SMEs in this domain. The joint proposal by BC Platforms, Euformatics and Oncompass Medicine was evaluated by leading experts and selected for funding. We look very much forward to a stimulating collaboration and a successful project.”

The supplier side of this contract is equally excited about the collaboration ahead.

Tero Silvola, CEO of BC Platforms, comments on the partnership and awarded contract “We knew early on that this program provides the opportunity to define the clinical practices for oncology and precision medicine for years to come if we succeed in being part of it. We have the genomic data management platform on top of which the workflows can be designed. We have a long history of working with Euformatics so partnering with them for variant interpretation and quality control was natural and Oncompass Medicine contributes strongly for the e-medication part of the program.”

Tommi Kaasalainen, CEO of Euformatics, continues “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.”

Prof. Dr. Istvan Petak, Founder and CEO of Oncompass Medicine, concludes “Our breakthrough AI-powered oncology software can help oncologists find the right targeted therapy for every cancer patient based on the whole complex molecular profile of their tumor. This being the last step in the NGS workflow we wanted to partner with BC Platforms and Euformatics to cover the full post-sequencing bioinformatics and reporting with an integrated end-to-end solution that will be easy for the hospitals to deploy after the project is completed. Looking forward to pushing the envelope.”

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.

* The consortium is formed by hospitals from the Medical University of Graz in Austria, University of Florence and University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy, Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands, Christian-Albrecht University of Kiel and St. Anna Children’s Cancer Research Institute in Germany, and the Centre Léon Bérard in France.

About Instand-NGS4P
Instand-NGS4P is a 65-month PCP project federating 7 leading medical centers (two are coordinating ERNs) as buyers’ groups with major experience in using different NGS platforms in research and routine diagnostics. The consortium is further strengthened by European patient advocacy groups, a standardization organization and partners participating in the European infrastructures BBMRI-ERIC, ELIXIR as well as several NGS-related EU programs to cover all technical aspects and transversal needs & requirements.

For more information, please visit the website www.instandngs4p.eu

About BC Platforms:
BC Platforms is a global leader in providing a powerful data and technology platform for personalized medicine and drug development, accelerating the translation of insights into clinical practice. Our technology drives the infinite loop between personalized care and research discoveries, leveraging latest science, deep technical expertise, strategic partnerships, and harmonized, diverse data collections. Our high performing genomic data discovery and analytics platform enables flexible data integration, secure analysis and interpretation of molecular and clinical information. 

For more information, please visit the website www.bcplatforms.com 

About Euformatics:
Euformatics is a Finnish software company that specializes in high standard bioinformatics tools for genomic data interpretation. Since 2010, Euformatics has been helping medical doctors, molecular genetics and pathology laboratories, and EQA providers to deliver most accurate results for the benefit of patients. Our present core solution is omnomicsSUITE, which includes omnomicsNGS for variant calling, annotation, classification, and reporting, and omnomicsQ for NGS data quality management and NGS-based test validation and verification.

For more information, please visit the website www.euformatics.com

About Oncompass Medicine:
Oncompass is the winner of the Future Unicorn Award 2021 of DIGITALEUROPE, the association of technology companies in forty countries in Europe. The company is the global champion of GETINTHERING startup competition 2021 out of competing companies of 109 countries. Oncompass was the first to develop a software as a medical device based on artificial intelligence that proved to improve therapeutic decisions in precision oncology. Oncompass also provides end-to-end services for oncology centers that wish to provide precision oncology to their patients. 

For more information, please visit the website www.oncompassmedicine.com