GenomeWebinars

The discovery of targetable oncogenic biomarkers in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has revolutionized its treatment. Current guidelines recommend fast and comprehensive biomarker screening for the selection of first-line targeted therapy or immunotherapy with or without chemotherapy. The number of actionable targets and the requirement for extensive molecular screening strategies are expected to increase in the coming years. This webinar will summarize how NSCLC biomarker testing can be expanded by RNA next-generation sequencing. In this webinar you will learn:

• The nature of clinical NSCLC biomarker testing in Europe
• A clinician’s perspective on why the clinical environment should drive the focus of research testing
• How Invitae’s expanded lung in-house panel* is well positioned to drive successful research testing

*Current products are for research use only, not for use in diagnostic procedures.

Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is a pre-invasive lesion that is thought to be a precursor to invasive breast cancer (IBC). DCIS comprises approximately 20% of newly diagnosed breast cancer cases, and unlike IBC is not life-threatening. However, if left untreated, up to half of DCIS patients will develop IBC within 10 years, so clinical management has trended towards presuming all patients are progressors and treating them with surgery, radiation therapy, and pharmacological interventions. Thus, understanding the central biological features in DCIS that drive the transition to IBC is a critical unmet need for guiding appropriate patient care.

In this webinar, Dr. Michael Angelo will discuss research his lab conducted to understand how the tumor microenvironment (TME) changes with transition to IBC. Angelo and colleagues used Multiplexed Ion Beam Imaging (MIBI) and a 37-plex antibody staining panel to analyze over 100 clinically annotated surgical resections covering the full spectrum of breast cancer progression. The team compared normal, DCIS, and IBC tissues using machine learning tools for multiplexed cell segmentation, pixel-based clustering, and object morphometrics. They found the transition from DCIS to IBC to progress by coordinated shifts in location and function of myoepithelium, fibroblasts, and infiltrating immune cells in the surrounding stroma. This study offers insight into the etiologies of DCIS and its transition to IBC—emphasizing the importance of the TME stroma—and may serve as a template for how to carry out similar analyses of preinvasive cancers using MIBI spatial proteomic signatures.

Point-of-care tests have been available to clinicians and consumers for decades, but more recently, molecular testing technologies that can be used at the point of care are making inroads.

For now, these molecular point-of-care tests are used largely for infectious disease testing, especially for the flu, and, more recently, COVID-19. But new technology developments are driving applications in new disease areas and end markets, including physician offices, emergency rooms, and CLIA-waived settings.

However, broad adoption of such technologies is not guaranteed. Along with ensuring high accuracy and ease of use, test developers must navigate pricing considerations, regulatory issues, and competition, not only from other molecular point-of-care tests, but also from more traditional tests.

In this roundtable discussion, industry stakeholders, including test developers and a venture capital fund, will discuss new molecular point-of-care testing technologies on the horizon, the technical challenges of developing such tests, and other challenges and opportunities ahead. 

The session will include a live Q&A in which attendees can post questions to our panelists.

Our panelists on this session are Jonathan O'Halloran, CEO at QuantuMDx; Brian Coe, CEO at Talis Biomedical; Justin Kao, partner at Khosla Ventures; and Dr. Tim Sweeney, CEO at Inflammatix.

Molecular profiling of tumors has expanded the treatment options for patients with a wide variety of high prevalence cancers and cancers associated with high death rates, such as lung, colon, prostate, and breast. Overall, combining genetic testing with targeted therapies is extending survival while minimizing adverse effects. This webinar will bring together leading experts in molecular pathology, NGS tumor profiling, companion diagnostics development, and precision oncology for a panel discussion. The panelists will discuss topics including today’s achievements advancing precision diagnostics and how to address the many unmet laboratory and testing needs required to support continuous improvement of cancer patient therapy.  

The panelists on this webinar are Dara L. Aisner, MD PhD, Associate Professor, Director Colorado Molecular Correlates Laboratory, Department of Pathology at the University of Colorado, George Green, PhD, Executive Director, Head Pharmacodiagnostics at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Greg Tsongalis, PhD, Director of the Laboratory for Clinical Genomics and Advanced Technologies at Theodor Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and Russell Garlick, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at LGC Clinical Diagnostics.

Certain FGFR alterations are key drivers of tumor growth in urothelial cancer, which is the sixth most common type of cancer in the US and is associated with poor prognosis. Erdafitinib has been approved for the treatment of urothelial carcinoma patients whose tumors harbor specific FGFR mutations or fusions. QIAGEN’s therascreen FGFR RGQ RT-PCR Kit was developed and FDA-approved as a companion diagnostic to identify such FGFR alterations.

In this discussion, expert panelists will examine the biological relevance and clinical significance of FGFRalterations and how FGFR testing can be leveraged to identify eligible patients.

Speakers include:

Dr. Arlene O. Siefker-Radtke, MDProfessor, Department of Genitourinary Medical Oncology University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Dr. Anjen Chenn, MD, PhDDiscipline Director, Molecular Oncology Labcorp

Dr. Neal D. Shore, MD, FACS Director, CPI Carolina Urologic Research Center