BBB & CCBIO seminar: Matthew G. Krebs

Matthew G. Krebs
Institute of Cancer Sciences, University of Manchester, UK

The modern oncology focus on precision medicine alongside increasing need to understand tumour heterogeneity, tumour evolution and resistance mechanisms, calls for novel approaches to tumour monitoring and characterisation. Biopsies remain the gold standard means for tumour profiling but they are invasive, sample only a single area of tumour and are often challenging to obtain serially during the course of a patient's disease. Circulating biomarkers may bypass some of these limitations but bring challenges of their own, not least in performing molecular profiling on small amounts of material. This talk will focus on Manchester's experience of circulating tumour cells and cell-free DNA in lung cancer. Specifically it will be discussed how these assays may be applied in the setting of early phase drug development as predictive, pharmacodynamic and resistance biomarkers and as a research tool to understand more about the biology of disease to guide future drug targets and combinations. It will also be discussed how circulating biomarkers are starting to be used in routine clinical practice to guide standard-of-care treatment decisions and selection of patients to early phase clinical trials. 

Chairperson: Bjørn Tore Gjertsen, CCBIO