GCLLSG 2016 | Precision medicine and mutation detection advances in CLL

Anna Schuh, MD, PhD, MRCP, FRCPath of University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, discusses new developments in the field of precision medicine for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). There are many treatment options available to patients, combined with a range of diagnostic tools to identify biological differences seen in CLL. Dr Schuh mentions that precision medicine means giving the right treatment to the right patient, at the right time. New sequencing technologies face challenges, like getting samples quickly to laboratories and testing standardization. Dr Schuh highlights the advances in TP53 mutation detection and whole genome sequencing (WGS), which gives an unbiased view on the genetic changes in CLL. There is a lot of potential of novel discovery in detection, especially when focused on non-coding parts of the genome. However, the challenge is to assign and understand what mutations in non-coding regions mean for patients. Recorded at the 2016 International Workshop of the German CLL Study Group (GCLLSG) in Cologne, Germany.