Espoo, Finland, December 2022. Euformatics, a global leader in NGS data quality control and variant interpretation, together with Finland’s BC Platforms and Hungary’s Oncompass Medicine, has now successfully been awarded contract for the second phase of developing standardized oncology workflows for a buyer consortium of seven leading central European hospitals*, represented by the Medical University Graz. This follows on from the announcement of 18 May 2022 about the three companies forming a partnership to deliver phase 1 of this ‘Instand-NGS4P’ project**.
Instand-NGS4P is a Horizon 2020 funded project that shares Euformatics vision for improving cancer patients’ diagnostics. This is achieved by developing and providing integrated and standardized workflows for Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and integrating information from cancer gene testing, pharmacogenetics testing and e-medication, to support medical decision making. The program will run, with three phases, until May 2025 with a total pre-commercial procurement budget of approximately EUR 8 million (around USD 8.2 million).
Euformatics, BC Platforms and Oncompass Medicine, have been working on designing the solution. After thorough review of submitted reports from various providers for Phase 1, and the applications for Phase 2 regarding prototyping, the Euformatics led partnership has been awarded the Phase 2 contract. The combination of existing IP and expertise in areas such as genomic data management, variant interpretation, NGS data quality control, and precision oncology, was fundamental to the partnership being awarded the contract.
Kurt Zatloukal, Professor of Pathology at the Medical University Graz, said, “Phase one of this important project to deliver innovative NGS workflows, driven by patient and clinical needs, has come a long way since our last announcement in May. The consortium of BC Platforms, Euformatics and Oncompass Medicine was selected from several highly competitive applications, which were assessed in a multi-step peer-reviewed process. We’re looking forward to continuing this stimulating collaboration in phase two.”
Tommi Kaasalainen, CEO of Euformatics, said, “We’re delighted with another win in partnership with BC Platforms, having deployed clinical solutions together in North America, Europe, and Asia. Oncompass Medicine has been an excellent addition to the partnership, providing significant value. We’ll be continuing with this winning trio in phase two of the Instand-NGS4P program, which will build on top of the Euformatics Genomics Hub offering in close collaboration with leading European healthcare institutions.”
Tero Silvola, CEO of BC Platforms, said, “I’m delighted that the outstanding quality of the work on this significant Horizon 2020 funded project, resulting from our close partnership with the talented teams at Euformatics, and Oncompass Medicine, has been recognised with a contract for phase two. This is about helping define the clinical practices for oncology and precision medicine for years to come. We are proud that our genomic data management platform is playing a part in making healthcare better, alongside Euformatics’s expertise in variant interpretation and quality control, and Oncompass Medicine’s strong contribution to the e-medication part of the program.”
Professor Dr. Istvan Petak, Founder and CEO of Oncompass Medicine, said, “I said back in May we’re looking forward to pushing the envelope, and I’m delighted with how far we’ve been able to go, working closely with our partners. We want to provide an end-to-end solution for oncologists to find the right targeted therapy for every cancer patient based on the whole complex molecular profile of their tumor. This partnership will make it easy for hospitals to deploy better NGS services, and patients have better treatments, long after the project is completed.”
The second phase of the project starts now, with results due in January 2024. The hospital purchasing consortium will then evaluate the output of all phase 2 contractors and select those to continue to phase 3 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.
** The project is co-funded by the European Union Grant Agreement number 874719.
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 Euformatics:
Euformatics is a Finnish IT 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 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 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
Press relations:
Instand-NGS4P: Kurt Zatloukal, kurt.zatloukal@medunigraz.at
Euformatics: Tommi Kaasalainen, tommi.kaasalainen@euformatics.com
BC Platforms: Tero Silvola, tero.silvola@bcplatforms.com
Oncompass Medicine: Istvan Petak, istvan.petak@oncompassmedicine.com
