Foresight Diagnostics has announced a licensing agreement with Roche Molecular Systems and Roche Sequencing Systems concerning its Phased variant Enrichment and Detection by Sequencing (PhasED-Seq) technology, for applications in Non-Hodgkin鈥檚 Lymphoma (NHL).
This agreement resolves the ongoing litigation between the parties, resulting in the dismissal of all claims against Foresight, its founders, and Stanford University.
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In July 2024, Roche filed a lawsuit against Stanford University and Foresight in California federal court, alleging that Foresight improperly utilised its genetic-sequencing trade secrets to create rival cancer-detection products, reported.
Roche claimed that Stanford professors Ash Alizadeh and Maximilian Diehn, who developed technology acquired by Roche in 2015, secretly formed Foresight while serving as consultants for Roche and misappropriated its technology for their new venture.
As part of the latest agreement, Roche received a limited, royalty-bearing, non-exclusive sublicence from Foresight to certain patents, allowing Roche to develop in vitro diagnostic (IVD) kits for NHL.
The intellectual property rights for PhasED-Seq remain with Stanford University, while Foresight retains exclusive licensing rights for all applications and regions.
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By GlobalDataForesight Diagnostics CEO Jake Chabon said: 鈥淲e are pleased to have resolved our differences with Roche and to move forward with this licensing agreement, which provides Roche with tailored rights in the field of non-Hodgkin鈥檚 Lymphoma.
鈥淭his resolution allows Foresight to remain focused on our mission to advance cutting-edge diagnostics aimed at improving outcomes for cancer patients worldwide.鈥�
The Foresight minimal residual disease (MRD) platform utilises PhasED-Seq technology to improve mutation detection accuracy in sequencing data by requiring the simultaneous identification of two unique non-reference events within a single DNA molecule.
This dual detection capability allows for a precise differentiation between tumour-derived cell-free DNA (ctDNA) and healthy cell-free DNA, facilitating the identification of ctDNA at concentrations below one part-per-million.
The PhasED-Seq technology has undergone validation across several patient samples.
Additionally, Foresight offers Foresight CLARITY, an assay designed to measure MRD with detection limits in parts per million.
The assay鈥檚 heightened sensitivity aims to deliver actionable insights for healthcare providers and biopharmaceutical firms, supporting personalised treatment strategies for patients with solid tumours and blood cancers.
In March 2025, Foresight, in collaboration with the University of Washington School of Medicine and Fred Hutch Cancer Center, announced the launch of the PRECISE-HL trial.
This trial is designed to utilise the Foresight Clarity laboratory-developed test (LDT) to explore personalised treatment options for patients with advanced-stage classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL).
