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Thursday, February 14

7:00 am Breakfast Presentation (Sponsorship Opportunity Available) or Morning Coffee

 

 

 8:00 - 9:40 Plenary Keynote Panel: Emerging Technologies & Industry PerspectivesThis session features a series of presentations on emerging and hot technologies in diagnostics, drug discovery & development, informatics, and oncology. Interactive Q&A discussion with the audience will be included. - Read more 

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9:40 Refreshment Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing

 

CTCs in Companion Diagnostics 

10:40 Chairperson's Remarks

Thomas Krahn, Ph.D., Head, Global Biomarker Research, Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, Bayer Pharma AG

10:45 Capturing and Molecular Analysis of Circulating Tumor Cells to Support Early Clinical Studies

Thomas Krahn, Ph.D., Head, Global Biomarker Research, Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, Bayer Pharma AG

We will present the capturing efficiency of different technologies for CTC isolation and the subsequent molecular analysis of captured cells.
The path forward from assay development to a validated biomarker assay will be discussed and first results from molecular CTC analysis in clinical studies will be shown. 

11:15 Implementation of CTC Assaysin Oncology Clinical Trials

Iman Jilani, Ph.D., Associate Director, Clinical Assay Group, Global Clinical Pharmacology, Pfizer, Inc.

This presentation will discuss the incorporation of CTC assays in oncology clinical trials. Content will include choosing a platform, method development, validation, and clinical trial implementation.

11:45 Analysis and Characterization of Subpopulations of Circulating Tumor Cells in Breast Cancer Patients

Haifeng Bao, Ph.D., Principal Scientist, Research & Development Translational Sciences, MedImmune

12:15 pm Assessment of Single Cell Mutational Status Reveals Breast Cancer CTC Heterogeneity

Nicolo Manaresi, Ph.D., CTO, Silicon Biosystems
Circulating Tumor Cells can be viewed as a "fluid biopsy" and have the potential to be used as an aid in cancer diagnosis and the monitoring of patient response to therapy.  Results of genetic analysis of individual CTCs from breast cancer patient samples show significant heterogeneity amongst the cells and supports the position that it is possible to obtain a clear picture of mutational heterogeneity at the single cell level.

12:30 Luncheon Presentation High Density Protein Microarray and its Application in Developing Ultra-Specific mAbsWeiwu He, Ph.D., CEO & President, OriGene Technologies, IncAntibody specificity is of pivotal importance for its use, especially in diagnostic and therapeutic applications.Currently no technologies have been established for antibody specificity validation. Here we will showcase OriGene’s novel platform of high density protein microarray technology to test antibody specificity. Using such platform, OriGene has successfully created a new line of ultra-specific mAbs, UltraMAB®, for multiple diagnostic targets, including HER2 and ERCC1. Sample cases will be discussed.   

1:15 Refreshment Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing 

 

 Single Cell Analyses 

1:40 Chairperson's Remarks
Stefanie Jeffrey, M.D., John and Marva Warnock Professor, Department of Surgery, Chief of Surgical Oncology Research, Stanford University School of Medicine 

1:45 Single Cell Profiling of Circulating Tumor Cells

Stefanie Jeffrey, M.D., John and Marva Warnock Professor, Department of Surgery, Chief of Surgical Oncology Research, Stanford University School of Medicine

2:15 Microtechnologies to Interrogate Signaling in Single Cells

Nancy Allbritton, M.D., Ph.D., Professor & Chair, UNC/NCSU Department of Biomedical Engineering; Chair, UNC CASE; Department of Chemistry, Department of Pharmacology, University of North Carolina; Department of Materials Science & Engineering, North Carolina State University

Chemical cytometry, the application of high-sensitivity chemical separations to characterize the contents of single or small numbers of cells, is emerging as an important approach to profile signaling at the single-cell level.  These microelectrophoretic methods can perform direct measurements of the activity of normal or oncogenic kinases in single patient cells to aid in tumor cell characterization.

2:45 NanoVelcro-Embedded Microchips for Detection and Isolation of Circulating Tumor Cells: Validation Studies in Oncology Clinic

Hsian-Rong Tseng, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging, Institute for Molecular Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles; California NanoSystems Institute

Our team at UCLA has demonstrated a highly efficient, inexpensive cell-affinity assay (i.e., NanoVelcro Chips) capable of enriching, identifying and isolating CTCs in whole-blood samples collected from patients with different solid tumors. To further exploit the diagnostic values of CTCs, we have been working on a novel single-cell isolation technology, by coupling a NanoVelcro Chip with Laser MicroDissection (LMD) technique with a goal of enabling highly efficient and specific isolation of viable/preservative-free CTCs for sequential molecular and functional analyses.

3:15 Molecular Analyses of CTC: Which View for Their Use to Improve Follow Up and Treatment of Patients with Cancer?  

Patrizia Paterlini-Brechot, Professor, Cell Biology & Oncology, University Paris Descartes, Paris; Director, INSERM Unit 807 & CSO, RarecellsBy using ISET, we have developed molecular methods targeted to CTC to identify non invasively theranostic mutations in patients with NSCLC and to perform NGS analyses. These advances will open the way to new exciting pathways to treat cancer patients.

3:45 Valentine's Day Celebration and Poster Competition Winner Announced in the Exhibit Hall (Last Chance for Poster Viewing)

4:35 The Ephesia Magnetic Arrays Technology, towards Quantitative High Content CTC Screening

Jean-Louis Viovy, Ph.D., Research Director, Macromolecules and Microsystems in Biology and Medicine Lab, Institute Curie

5:05 Expanding the Definition of Traditional CTCs: Cells Associated with Cancer in the Blood of Patients with Solid Tumors

Jeffrey J. Chalmers, Ph.D., Professor, Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering; Director, Analytical Cytometry Shared Resource, The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center

The currently accepted definition of CTCs are cells that have: a nuclei, cytokeratin+ EpCAM+, and CD45-. Emerging evidence suggests that other rare, cancer associated circulating cells are present in the blood of metastatic cancer patients including CD45+ cytokeratin+ cells. In this presentation, results will be presented on further characterization of both traditional CTC as well as these CD45+, CK+ cells using flow cytometry and multispectral, deconvolution fluorescence spectroscopy and relate this characterization to patient status. A comparison with and without negative, magnetic pre-enrichment will be discussed.