Precision Oncology Resources: Webinars

The use of next-generation sequencing (NGS) approaches in the clinical setting has continued to advance precision oncology, aiding in biomarker-informed therapy selection for cancer patients. Moreover, the use of this technology has also enabled the rapid pace at which biomarkers are being identified, presenting a challenge for diagnostic labs in providing comprehensive testing of all relevant biomarkers, while maintaining operational efficiency and viable cost per test.

Comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) is an approach that allows laboratories to implement broad-based testing that addresses multiple tumor types while also allowing for streamlined workflows, minimizing the need for serial testing and reducing the frequency of content updates of panel-based tests. Though this approach presents significant benefits, facilitating a path to appropriate reimbursement rates with this approach remains a challenge.

In this webinar, Sandra Pearson, president of Pearson Healthcare Consulting, will walk through a snapshot of the current oncology testing and reimbursement landscape and discuss opportunities that may present viable options for laboratories interested in adopting comprehensive genomic profiling.

Despite significant research efforts, there are thousands of both rare and more common complex diseases without a line of sight toward a viable therapeutic intervention. Genetics and precision medicine offer great promise to address unmet needs for these patients, and selecting genetically supported targets may increase success rates in clinical development. However, to be successful, scientists need access to genetic and clinical data across sizable populations of affected patients.

This session will highlight an approach between scientists at Deerfield Management Company, a healthcare investment firm, and Invitae, a leading medical genetic testing company, to advance drug discovery and development, using genomic and clinical data from millions of patients with rare disease. 

In this webinar, Matt Nelson and Alix Lacoste will share perspectives on combining genomic and clinical data in a large disease cohort to:

• Identify opportunities to treat genetically defined diseases with a high unmet need.
• Study incidence and prevalence rates of both rare and complex disorders.
• Uncover novel genotype-phenotype associations underlying more common complex diseases.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a molecularly heterogeneous subtype of breast cancer, and responses to standard neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy are variable. While multiple prognostic biomarkers have been identified in TNBC, we currently lack predictive biomarkers for response to specific therapies. The development of robust validated biomarkers could enable biology-adapted administration of specific cytotoxic agents and potentially selective administration of immunotherapy, thereby enabling personalized systemic therapy.

In this webinar, Priyanka Sharma and Shane Stecklein of the Kansas University Medical Center will discuss how, using Almac ClaraT, they identified the DNA damage immune response (DDIR) gene expression signature as prognostic in a cohort of TNBC patients enrolled on the SWOG S9313 adjuvant chemotherapy trial. They have also showed that DDIR, in combination with homologous recombination deficiency, can identify immune-enriched and immune-depleted prognostic groups that have unique immune microenvironmental features that may reflect variable vulnerabilities to chemoimmunotherapy.

This webinar is part four of the four-part Precision Oncology News Virtual Molecular Tumor Board series.

In this tumor-specific session, our expert panelists will review patient cases in which the clinical utility of genomics has presented various therapy considerations for patients diagnosed with gastrointestinal and genitourinary cancers.

Discussions will address homologous recombination deficiency (HRD), the evaluation of fusion-positive malignancies, as well as resistance mechanisms following targeted therapy and thoughts on re-challenging a patient.

Our panel will address these challenges and opportunities within the context of specific clinical cases. The session will wrap up with a live Q&A in which attendees can discuss the cases with the Virtual Molecular Tumor Board panelists.

Bladder cancer is the seventh most common cancer in the UK, with over 100,000 people being referred to hospital clinics annually for bladder cancer investigation, usually after passing blood in their urine. The first stage of investigation is usually flexible cystoscopy, which is invasive and painful.  

Galeas Bladder is a molecular biomarker test, developed by liquid biopsy company Nonacus and validated by Richard Bryan and Douglas Ward from the University of Birmingham, that leverages targeted next-generation sequencing to interrogate the key somatic mutations found across all bladder cancers. Galeas Bladder enables highly sensitive and accurate detection of tumor-derived DNA from a urine sample, offering a viable non-invasive alternative to flexible cystoscopy.

In this webinar, Richard Bryan and Douglas Ward will provide an overview of the novel Galeas Bladder test and outline how it has been validated using urine samples from three UK clinical cohorts.

Interest in combinations of systemic and targeted therapies as well as the administration of multiple modalities — such as small-molecule kinase inhibitors, monoclonal antibodies, and immunotherapy — continues to increase.  The success of specific therapeutic combinations is being attributed to a variety of factors: tumor-specific biology, such as gene mutations and the tumor microenvironment, as well as patient-specific attributes, such as their immune repertoire. Thus, gathering expanded tumor- and patient-specific genotypic information becomes critical to successfully identify which patients may benefit from specific combinations. 

In this webinar, our speakers will discuss how genotypic biomarkers are being used to better understand cancer biology, develop prognostic markers, and predict therapeutic success. 

Attendees will learn about:

• The changing landscape of combination cancer therapies and mutations of interest in colorectal cancer.
• Implementing fragment analysis-based MSI testing and sequencing-based targeted genotyping of key genetic biomarkers such as KRAS in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissues.
• Retrospective annotation of a large biorepository with the latest clinically relevant biomarkers to generate highly targeted cohorts to better understand the mechanism of action and underlying biology of new therapies.
• Multi-omic evaluation of high microsatellite instability (MSI-H) tumors to correlate MSI status with immunomodulatory receptor expression in matched human biospecimens.

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) accounts for nearly 80 percent of lung cancer cases and exhibits a median survival of less than one year following diagnosis. A relatively unexplored avenue of immunotherapy for specific cancers may lie in chimeric RNAs that differentiate cancerous cells from their non-cancerous neighbors. Additionally, novel peptide junctions may form neoantigens, which may be targeted by the immune system de novo or by vaccines.

In this webinar, Micah Castillo, lead scientist at the University of Houston Sequencing and Gene Editing Core, will discuss work undertaken to develop a vaccine targeting the fusion junction of KIF5B-RET in lung cancer and to establish a robust pipeline for the generation of vaccines directed against chimeric RNAs in other types of cancers. Castillo will discuss assessing the affinity of neopeptides formed by the translated junction of the patient-derived chimeric RNA to major histocompatibility class I molecules, testing their in vitro affinity in peripheral blood mononuclear cells by enzyme-linked immune absorbent spot assay, and designing an mRNA vaccine to express the KIF5B-RET fusion.

Early detection can save lives. But have you ever explored linking phenotypic and genomic or other -omic data to assess the full view of the patient journey?

In this webinar, experts from Genetic Technologies and DNAnexus will discuss how combining genetic and clinical data to categorize a person’s risk of developing a disease is changing the field of personalized predictive genetics. The speakers will discuss:

• Overcoming challenges related to integrating disparate data sets and building a lab-agnostic infrastructure so sample data can be funneled anywhere, without the need for a wet lab, enabling unprecedented scale.
• How an integrated risk assessment platform for multiple cancers, cardiovascular, and metabolic diseases delivers clinically actionable results to empower physicians and patients to proactively manage health.
• Provide a forward-looking perspective on the role of validated tests in making personalized, predictive healthcare a reality.