10:10-10:15am EST
Welcome and Introduction
Nigel Russell, Director of Events, GenomeWeb
10:15-11:10am EST
Informing Patient Care and Oncology Clinical Trial Strategies with Innovative Next-Generation Sequencing
Moderator: Shakti Ramikissoon, MD, PhD, Vice President, Medical Lead for Oncology, LabCorp
Panelists: Jeff Conroy, BSc, Head of Science, OmniSeq; Taylor Jensen, PhD, Vice President, Head of Oncology Science, Labcorp; Mark Sausen, PhD, Vice President, Technology Innovation at Personal Genome Diagnostics
Next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based diagnostics represents the future of treatment and response monitoring for people with cancer. This presentation will highlight the role of NGS-based diagnostics in providing comprehensive insights that can be used to accelerate patient recruitment for clinical trials and identify patients eligible for approved precision oncology treatments strategies.
- Accessing actionable data for better decision-making with broad-panel NGS tumor profiling
- Reducing the need for invasive biopsy procedures, minimizing costs and bringing precision diagnostics closer to patients with liquid biopsy testing
- Determining eligibility of patients to active clinical trials, based on the variants detected in their tissue, bone marrow, or peripheral blood specimens.
- Understanding key challenges and opportunities in realizing the clinical potential of NGS-based diagnostics
11:15-11:55am EST
Tissue Based Multiplex Assays as Companion Diagnostics
Jim Christian, MD, Pathologist, Companion Diagnostics, Agilent Technologies; Mark Verardo, PhD, Senior Scientific Program Manager, Companion Diagnostics, Agilent Technologies, Inc
- The increasing significance of multiplex biomarkers for Companion Diagnostic programs.
- The unique considerations of staining and scoring for tissue based multiplex biomarkers for the modern Pathology laboratory workflow.
- The role of multiplexing in potential therapy selection.
12:00-12:40pm EST
The Emergence of Algorithmic Classifiers and Diagnostics in Clinical Development and Practice
Moderator: Justin Guinney, PhD, Senior Vice President, Cancer Genomics, Tempus
Panelists: Yasmin Hashambhoy Ramsay, PhD, Associate Director, Translational Science, Jounce Therapeutics; Antreas Hindoyan, PhD, Principal Scientist, Oncology Clinical Biomarker Group Lead, Amgen; Timothy Taxter MD, Senior Medical Director, Tempus Labs
- Overview of Tempus Labs’ life science and ALGOs offerings
- Developing predictive algorithms based on DNA, RNA, clinical and imaging data
- Case studies and emerging trends on how algorithms are being developed in academia, and how they might be deployed into clinical use in the future.
12:45-1:05pm EST
Accelerating Biomarker Testing and Cancer Care Equity Through Collaboration
Omar Perez, PhD, RAC, Head, Medical Diagnostic Strategy, US Medical Affairs, AstraZeneca
Precision medicine is among the key contributors that have led to significant gains in progressing cancer survivorship, with cancer deaths decreasing by 2.2% from 2016-2017—the largest single-year drop on record. Key to enabling treatment with precision medicine is biomarker testing, which can help determine the most appropriate treatment approach, potentially resulting in a reduction in unnecessary or ineffective care and associated costs. Importantly, it can also help improve the overall survival of patients with certain cancers compared with a non-biomarker approach. However, despite the clear benefits, rates of biomarker testing across tumor types are below guideline recommendations, due to a variety of factors. Join Dr. Omar Perez for a presentation that will dive into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on precision medicine and cancer care. Dr. Perez will provide a deeper understanding into the disparity and lack of equity in biomarker testing, as well as the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration to bring tangible and sustainable solutions to patients with cancer.
1:05-2:00pm EST
Enabling Broader Implementation of Precision Medicine Within Hematology
Moderator: Mikael Rinne, MD, PhD, Vice President, Clinical Development, Blueprint Medicines
Panelists: Jay Patel, MD, MBA, Associate Professor, Pathology, University of Utah; Executive Director, Clinical Trials & PharmaDx, ARUP Laboratories; Kenna Shaw, PhD, Executive Director, Khalifa Institute, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center; Tsewang Tashi, MD, Assistant Professor, Medicine, Hematology & Hematologic Malignancies, Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah
Precision medicine incorporates growing knowledge of disease-specific features as well as molecular and/or cellular interactions to help improve diagnosis and prognosis and to predict outcomes, potentially transforming care for biomarker-driven diseases. Focused research and technological advances have led to the identification of an increased number of genomic biomarkers for many disorders, including multiple hematologic malignancies. As a result, clinicians have access to a growing arsenal of targeted therapies across diverse treatment modalities, as well as the opportunity to leverage novel combination strategies.
This session will highlight precision medicine strategies for hematologic malignancies and solid tumors, and discuss key opportunities for expanding the use of precision medicine approaches more broadly within hematology. We will review real-world learnings from using precision medicine to treat solid tumors, and how those learnings can help broaden the adoption of precision medicine, based on the clinical perspectives of a precision medicine healthcare leader, a hematologist/oncologist and a pathologist. The panelists will discuss their views on overcoming barriers to implementing precision medicine, including advancing healthcare system-wide biomarker testing protocols that are aligned with evolving treatment guidelines, integrating biomarker test results into electronic medical records and applying clinical decision support tools. The session will also highlight new opportunities to leverage biomarker testing to inform clinical decision-making, featuring systemic mastocytosis (SM) as a case study. SM is a rare hematologic disorder driven by the KIT D816V mutation in approximately 95% of cases, and patients may present clinically with a range of non-specific symptoms, which can make diagnosis challenging. For SM and other hematologic disorders, panelists will discuss the importance of integrating datasets from multiple pathologic and biomarker assessments, as well as collaborating effectively across multi-disciplinary care teams.
2:15-3:10pm EST
DecisionDx®-Melanoma and the Evolution of Gene Expression Profile (GEP) Testing in Cutaneous Melanoma
Moderators: Robert Cook, PhD, Senior Vice President, Research & Development, Castle Biosciences; Matthew Goldberg, MD, Medical Director, Castle Biosciences; Assistant Clinical Professor, Dermatology, Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai, New York City; Board-Certified Dermatologist and Dermatopathologist
Panelists: John T. Vetto, MD, FACS, FASA, Professor of Surgery, Surgical Oncology; Professor of Dermatology, Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine; David M. Hyams, MD, FACS, Director, Desert Surgical Oncology, Eisenhower Medical Center, Rancho Mirage, California
One of the primary challenges in managing melanoma, an aggressive form of skin cancer, is predicting the course of each patients’ disease. The risk indicators that physicians traditionally use to stage cancer include clinical and pathologic factors and patient history. While these are important sources of information, these approaches can have limitations.
DecisionDx®-Melanoma is a prognostic gene expression profile (GEP) test that identifies a patient’s risk of melanoma recurrence or metastasis based on the biologic profile of 31 genes within the patient’s tumor tissue. Evaluating a patient’s individualized genomic information alongside his/her traditional clinical and pathologic factors can help physicians and patients make more informed, risk-aligned disease management and treatment decisions.
DecisionDx®-Melanoma is designed to offer critical information to help guide patient treatment. This session will discuss the role of DecisionDx-Melanoma in clinical dermatology practice.