Tempus and Northwestern Expand Partnership to Accelerate Personalized Medicine Efforts

CHICAGO, May 11, 2017 -- Tempus, a technology company focused on helping doctors personalize cancer care by collecting, sorting and analyzing clinical and molecular data and the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University announce a second collaboration aimed at personalizing care for cancer patients.

As part of the newest collaboration, Tempus will provide molecular sequencing and analysis for patient derived xenograft (PDX) models and patient derived organoid models, which will allow researchers to better understand how representative in-vivo modeling systems are of a patient’s actual biology.  By sequencing and analyzing large cohorts of these patient derived biological models, researchers and physicians should be able to better predict how a patient’s cancer will progress and which specific clinical treatments may be more likely to lead to positive responses.

“Oftentimes, researchers and physicians working with PDX and organoid models are starting from an imperfect place,” said Leonidas Platanias, MD, PhD, Director of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University. “Obtaining molecular information on the models increases the utility to researchers and physicians who will be able to better understand how representative they are of individual patients.”

“Northwestern’s Lurie Cancer Center is one of the country’s leading academic medical centers and we are thrilled to have been chosen to help them bring cutting edge technology to advance both their clinical and research efforts,” said Eric Lefkofsky, co-founder and CEO of Tempus. “We are eager to strengthen our partnership by combining our advanced modeling infrastructure and the hospital’s deep expertise to advance treatment for patients battling this disease.” 

Tempus currently serves as a preferred partner to handle genomic sequencing and analysis as part of Lurie Cancer Center’s OncoSET initiative. Lurie Cancer Center launched the OncoSET (Sequence, Evaluate, Treat) Program to provide personalized care and customized treatments for patients with cancer.   Lurie Cancer Center is one of only 47 Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the U.S. designated by the National Cancer Institute.

Tempus provides molecular sequencing and clinical analytic solutions for top academic centers, hospital systems, associations, and healthcare providers.

About Tempus:
Tempus is a technology company that is building the world’s largest library of molecular and clinical data and an operating system to make that data accessible and useful. We enable physicians to deliver personalized cancer care for patients through our interactive analytical and machine learning platform. We provide genomic sequencing services and analyze molecular and therapeutic data to empower physicians to make real-time, data-driven decisions. Our goal is for each patient to benefit from the treatment of others who came before by providing physicians with tools that learn as we gather more data. For more information, visit tempus.com and follow us on Facebook (Tempus Labs) and Twitter (@TempusLabs). For more information on Eric Lefkofsky, visit lefkofsky.com.

About Lurie Cancer Center:
The Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, one of only 47 National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the country, is committed to being a national leader in the battle to overcome cancer. To this end, the Lurie Cancer Center is dedicated to scientific discovery, advancing medical knowledge, providing compassionate, state-of-the-art cancer care, and training the next generation of clinicians and scientists.  For more information, visit cancer.northwestern.edu.

Contact: Clo Ewing
Director of Communications
[email protected]