Industry News: Thermo Fisher Scientific Joins the Cancer Moonshot Initiative to Help Advance Precision Medicine

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., the world leader in serving science, has joined the Cancer Moonshot, an initiative led by Vice President Joe Biden aimed at making more therapies available to more patients while also improving cancer detection at early stages and, ultimately, preventing the disease. Initially, Thermo Fisher will join a liquid biopsy-based precision oncology pilot, called the Blood Profiling Atlas designed to make it easier for oncologists to access databases of liquid biopsy information when diagnosing patients.

“The Cancer Moonshot is an ambitious, all-hands initiative that requires the best minds and best technologies working collaboratively,” said Marc N. Casper, president and chief executive officer of Thermo Fisher Scientific. “As part of our broader focus on precision medicine, which includes investments to accelerate the development of more effective cancer screening, detection, monitoring and treatment, we’re honored to contribute our data and expertise to this important initiative.”

Thermo Fisher is already an active collaborator globally in the war on cancer, working with governments and private sector partners alike to support advancements in precision medicine. Active projects include the National Cancer Institute’s Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice (NCI-MATCH) clinical trial in the U.S. The company is also supporting groundbreaking research by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden to demonstrate the potential of integrating both protein biomarkers and genetic markers in a single test for prostate cancer.

Consistent with the Cancer Moonshot mission, Thermo Fisher is focused on helping to make precision medicine technologies more mainstream so that new diagnostics and therapies have clinical application and utility. Current research under way includes developing cell-free DNA (cfDNA) tumor detection tests, providing more effective ways to monitor responses to immunotherapy and advancing liquid biopsy techniques.

“Thermo Fisher’s unique breadth of precision medicine solutions enables us to play an important role in initiatives such as the Cancer Moonshot,” said Alan Sachs, chief scientific officer for Thermo Fisher. “From mass spectrometry for protein research to next-generation targeted gene sequencing, we can offer a wealth of technologies, insight and data to make an immediate contribution to the work that other collaborators are already doing.”