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Last month, the Banbury Center held its “CSHL Technology and Education Council: Challenges and Promise in Precision Medicine” meeting (February 18-20). During this time, I was able to meet with Christopher Kemp, Ph.D., and learn about the oncology research he performs and how he’s hoping to make a difference through it. Dr. Kemp, a Full Member at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA, received his doctorate in oncology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) results from the enhanced proliferation and impaired differentiation of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells. Using an ex vivo functional screening assay, we identified that the combination of the BTK inhibitor ibrutinib and BCL2 inhibitor venetoclax (IBR + VEN), currently in clinical trials for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), demonstrated enhanced efficacy on primary AML patient specimens, AML cell lines, and in a mouse xenograft model of AML.

Most patients with relapsed or refractory (R/R) acute myeloid leukemia (AML) do not benefit from current re-induction or approved targeted therapies. In the absence of targetable genetic mutations, there is minimal guidance on optimal treatment selection particularly in the R/R setting highlighting an unmet need for clinically useful functional biomarkers. Blood and bone marrow samples from patients treated on two clinical trials were used to test the combination of lenalidomide (LEN) and MEC (mitoxantrone, etoposide, and cytarabine) chemotherapy in R/R AML patients.

Jeffrey Tyner, Ph.D., has received an Emerging Leader Award from @TheMarkFdn for Cancer Research. The award will support his research seeking combinations of anticancer agents able to stop #AML by targeting unique vulnerabilities among patients.

Congratulations to Sara Cherry on her well-deserved Penn Medicine Stanley N. Cohen Biomedical Research Award! In recognition of an outstanding body of work in Biomedical Research!

A technique involving BH3 profiling is emerging as a promising drug discovery tool for assessing whether a tumor is primed for cell death and would respond to anticancer therapy, according to a presentation at the 2019 Association for Molecular Pathology Annual Meeting.

Remarkable advances in genomic profiling of tumors have not translated easily into effective personalized therapies for many patients. Functional precision medicine brings forward an alternative approach, one where the drug-sensitivity phenotype of individual tumors is layered onto the genotype information. Christopher Kemp hail- ing from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and Carla Grandori jointly founded Cure First and SEngine Precision Medicine, organizations that are advancing the implementation of cancer functional testing. Here they discuss the chal- lenges and multiple opportunities lying ahead to enable the adoption of functional approaches to precision therapy in oncology.

As researchers improve ways to quickly and cheaply sequence DNA, the concept of precision medicine is gaining a foothold in the medical community. When it comes to cancer, a disease that leaves its mark in a patient's genome, sequencing tumor DNA to tailor treatment plans to individuals seems an obvious application of the technology. "The idea of precision medicine as in individualized treatment, I think that makes so much sense," says Alice Soragni, a cancer biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) David Geffen School of Medicine. "When you work with a few of these tumors, each and every one is a bit different."

Excellent science, here by Dr. Tony Letai, followed by a proper Austrian dinner.

Tumor organoids maintain cell–cell interactions, heterogeneity, microenvironment, and drug response of the sample they originate from. Thus, there is increasing interest in developing tumor organoid models for drug development and personalized medicine applications. Although organoids are in principle amenable to high-throughput screenings, progress has been hampered by technical constraints and extensive manipulations required by current methods.