BC Platforms has announced that, together with Finland’s Euformatics and Hungary’s Oncompass Medicine, the BCP-led partnership has been awarded a contract for the second phase of developing standardised oncology workflows for a consortium of seven leading central European hospitals, represented by the Medical University Graz.
The three companies formed a partnership to deliver the first phase of the ‘Instand-NGS4P’ project in May 2022. The hospital consortium is made up of 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.
Instand-NGS4P is a Horizon 2020 funded project that shares BC Platforms’ vision for improving cancer patients’ diagnostics. This is achieved by developing and providing integrated and standardised 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 €8 million.
BC Platforms, Euformatics, 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 BC Platforms 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.”
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 programme.”
The second phase of the project has now started, 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 two standardised NGS workflows in 2025 as the result of the Instand-NGS4P programme.