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The Department of Biomedicine
CCBIO seminar

CCBIO seminar: Torsten O. Nielsen

Breast cancer biomarker development: intrinsic subtypes, Ki67 and proteomics

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Torsten O. Nielsen
Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Canada

Torsten Nielsen is a clinician-scientist pathologist from the University of British Columbia, whose research programs focus on breast cancer and sarcomas. Prof. Nielsen will discuss how some of the world's earliest cancer transcriptomics experiments, through a series of subsequent validation and functional studies, were systemically translated into new diagnostic tools and therapeutic strategies in cancer. In particular, he will tell the story behind breast cancer intrinsic subtyping and the development of the PAM50 classifier, its conversion into a nanoString-based diagnostic, and how this since has been applied to clinical trials to develop predictive markers for breast cancer, including new data on triple negative subtyping and capecitabine benefit. As one of the leaders of the International Ki67 Working Group, Prof. Nielsen will also describe current evidence and recommendations for Ki67 assessment in breast cancer, showing new results being presented at ASCO 2022 from a prospective clinical trial using this marker to guide the need for adjuvant radiation therapy. Finally, he will present very recently-published work on applying proteomics technologies to formalin-fixed breast cancer surgical specimens and how this new technology contributes to the molecular classification of breast cancer.

Join us also at the informal pizza get-together after the talk!

Chairperson: Lars A. Akslen, CCBIO