Does Roche have buyer's remorse for Flatiron takeover?
Roche is reported to be considering the sale of its cancer data specialist Flatiron Health, just a few years after it bought the company for $1.9 billion.
The Financial Times first revealed the rumour, citing people familiar with the matter who suggested that, while Roche had deliberately kept Flatiron as an independent entity, its ownership has been a brake on other drugmakers using its technology platform.
New York City-based Flatiron – which was founded in 2012 with backing from Google's parent firm Alphabet – manages electronic health records for cancer patients at community oncology practices and academic medical centres across the US, and offers the anonymised data as a resource for cancer researchers. According to the FT, two-thirds of its revenues come from selling data to pharma companies.
The firm caught Roche's eye after working with pharma companies and regulators to develop new approaches for how real-world evidence may be used in regulatory decision-making, including the design and validation of novel endpoints for clinical trials. It bought the company amid a major push into the digital health arena around that time alongside other deals, including a clinical data partnership with GE Health and genetic profiling specialist Foundation Medicine.
The Swiss pharma group – which has seen a complete change of top management in the intervening years – is reportedly working with Citigroup to look into various options for Flatiron, which could include the sale of all or part of the business. Neither company has been prepared to comment on the rumour.
When it bought Flatiron in 2018, Roche's former pharma chief executive Daniel O'Day said: "This is an important step in our personalised healthcare strategy for Roche, as we believe that regulatory-grade real-world evidence is a key ingredient to accelerate the development of, and access to, new cancer treatments."
The data company has continued to forge plenty of partnerships in the intervening years, including a wide-ranging alliance with the FDA, which was extended for another five years last year. However, the company's partnership deals since the takeover – at least those announced publicly – have featured a lot more academic and healthcare organisations than pharma companies. Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb feature among its publicised pharma collaborations.
Flatiron has over 2,500 employees across the UK, Germany, Japan, and the US.
