June 14, 2017 | Robert Anders of Johns Hopkins Medicine is featured on this podcast from Cambridge Health Tech Institute for the Next Generation Diagnostic Summit, which runs August 15th to the 18th in Washington, DC. Topics include the integration of genomic, proteomic and immunological markers for cancer immunotherapy, challenges in implementing multiplex approaches, and more. Here is a sample of the discussion that takes place. Podcast
CHI: You're suggesting a multiplexed approach for predicting responses to cancer immunotherapy using biomarkers that integrate genomic protein and immunological markers. Can you please elaborate on this strategy?
Robert Anders: … When it comes to immune therapy I think there has been a lot of pressure on trying to find the one predictive biomarker that will determine whether a patient will benefit from a given therapy.
What I plan to do in the lecture that I'm going to give is explain how when it comes to colon cancer, specifically mismatch repair deficient types of colon cancer that selecting patients for treatment or for successful treatment often is possible if people consider the genomic landscape. In other words, do these patients have a lot of mutations. If they have a lot of mutations that means they're more likely to have a neoepitope and an neoepitope is something that the patient's own immune system can use to attack that cancer so mutations would be one additional parameter.