Pharmaceutical giant Roche Holding will pay $2.4 billion to acquire the remaining shares it doesn't already own of Foundation Medicine, putting more stake into a future for personalized cancer treatments, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The Swiss drugmaker Roche already owns about 57 percent of Foundation Medicine, and it will pay $137 a share to fully control the Cambridge, Mass.-based company.
Foundation Medicine, founded in 2010, makes molecular-diagnostic tests that can identify genomic alterations to help physicians gain insight into the makeup of a patient's cancer. Once a patient's cancer is profiled, it helps match the patient to various therapies, immunotherapy and clinical trials. The tests are used on solid tumor cancers, including breast, ovarian and lung.
"This is important to our personalized healthcare strategy, as we believe molecular insights and the broad availability of high quality comprehensive genomic profiling are key enablers for the development of, and access to, new cancer treatments," Daniel O'Day, CEO of Roche Pharmaceuticals, told the WSJ.
The acquisition is the latest boost to Roche's cancer treatment portfolio. The drugmaker recently completed its $1.9B purchase of oncology software company Flatiron Health and cancer therapy company Ignyta.