By Diagnostics World Staff
July 11, 2019 | The Next Generation Diagnostics Summit, August 20-22 in Washington, D.C., aims to "Advance Diagnostics Together", and this year, the event brings top pharma from around to world to work closely with key players, fostering relationships, and continuing conversations that will improve patient care with cutting-edge technology and biomarkers that will bring life-saving medicine to market.
Next month, pharma representatives are sharing how biomarkers are changing drug discovery and development, and identifying limitations and opportunities for widespread application.
Dr. Brian Dougherty of AstraZeneca will describe how discordance between plasma and tumor variant calling has been attributed primarily to tumor heterogeneity, while investigating technical variables. This work will ensure that liquid biopsy tests are robust for clinical use.
Dr. Mitch Raponi of BeiGene will use his experience working with therapeutic strategies to discuss liquid biopsy companion diagnostics and their potential for prostate cancer. He will be discussing the treatment utility of PARP inhibitors in particular. These treatments have already proved promising for breast cancer in early trials for their efficacy in BRCA-mutated patients. He will elaborate on their use in prostate cancer.
In his talk exploring the most recent evolutions of the pharmacodiagnostics field, Dr. George Green, Head of Pharmacodiagnostics at Bristol-Myers Squibb, calls for advanced diagnostics tools to meet the growth of recently developed complex biomarkers, particularly PD-L1 and tumor mutational burden. These biomarkers are garnering interest with their success but require the systems and tools to support their growth and application.
Dr. Roman Yelensky will share how Gritstone Oncology is using AI-aided biomarkers for targeting tumors and providing personalized immunotherapy to patients. He has worked on many initiatives for bringing NGS companion diagnostics to the clinic, and at the Next Generation Diagnostics Summit, he will share how he is using AI to enable them to target tumors for delivering personalized medicine.