Tesaro Inc. and Genentech Inc. are partnering to evaluate the combination of the latter's immunotherapy Tecentriq and Tesaro's ovarian cancer drug Zejula in patients with advanced bladder cancer.

The arrangement includes testing the experimental combination in Morpheus, Roche Holding AG's cancer immunotherapy platform, to develop combinations of cancer immunotherapies more rapidly and efficiently.

The planned trial will be conducted by Genentech and is expected to begin in mid-2018.

Genentech is a unit of Roche.