The University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center in Ann Arbor has partnered with Chicago-based health-tech company Tempus to bring MI-ONCOSEQ — a panel that uses high-throughput gene sequencing techniques in a clinical setting to help find new options for cancer patients — to health care providers across the country.
As part of the partnership, U-M will license the MI-ONCOSEQ panel, designed for those seeking high quality data and analyses to personalize treatment for patients, to Tempus. The health-tech company, which offers interactive analytical and machine learning platforms, will also add the panel to a system that builds insight as it grows.
With MI-ONCOSEQ, sequencing of germline and tumor DNA as well as the RNA of the tumor are used to help guide clinicians’ recommendations of trials or targeted therapies based on the molecular profile of each patient’s tumor.
The panel has been used at University of Michigan to help guide the care of hundreds of metastatic cancer patients, as well as make discoveries in both common and rare tumors.
“A ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach is not effective in managing cancer,” says Dr. Arul Chinnaiyan, director of the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology and scientific adviser to Tempus. “Licensing the MI-ONCOSEQ panel to Tempus, we hope to make it commonplace for patients to have a molecular blueprint of their tumor and for their physicians to have access to innovative clinical research and analytic tools that will provide evidence for their decision making.”
The University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center has nearly 400 faculty members. It is one of 47 centers designated “comprehensive” by the National Cancer Institute and one of 27 institutions that make up the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, which sets national guidelines for consistent, high-quality, and cost-effective cancer care.
