Roche sues Stanford University, cancer-detection startup over trade secrets

July 2 (Reuters) - Roche (ROG.S) has sued Stanford University and medical technology startup Foresight Diagnostics in California federal court, claiming Foresight misused its genetic-sequencing trade secrets to develop competing cancer-detection products.

Roche said in the complaint filed on Monday that Stanford University professors Maximilian Diehn and Ash Alizadeh, whose technology Roche acquired in 2015, secretly created Foresight while working as Roche consultants and stole its technology to use in their new business.

Spokespeople for Foresight and Roche declined to comment on the lawsuit on Tuesday. Spokespeople for Stanford did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

According to the complaint, Roche bought Diehn and Alizadeh's Capp Medical in 2015 along with its technology for analyzing DNA from a patient's bloodstream to detect cancer. Roche said that it paid "tens of millions of dollars" for the technology and uses it in its Avenio cancer-detection kits.

The lawsuit said that Diehn, Alizadeh and fellow Stanford professor David Kurtz worked for Roche when they founded Boulder, Colorado-based Foresight in 2020. The complaint accused Foresight of misusing the technology that Roche acquired to raise more than $70 million in funding for its own cancer-detection business.

Roche requested an unspecified amount of money damages and also asked the court to force Stanford and Foresight to hand over patent applications that allegedly cover Roche's technology.

The case is Roche Molecular Systems Inc v. Foresight Diagnostics Inc, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 5:24-cv-03972.