Wyndham Wilson, MD, PhD of the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD discusses new technologies using circulating tumor DNA in lymphoma with Ash Alizadeh, MD, PhD of Stanford Comprehensive Cancer Center, Stanford, CA, Mark Roschewski, MD of National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD and Michael Williams, MD of University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. Dr Alizadeh talks about cancer personalized profiling by deep sequencing (CAPP-seq); the idea is to capture part of cancer genome that might tell us about therapies that we might want to treat patients with. Prof. Williams talks about the potential of this technology and precision medicine in lymphoma. One of the questions is how we can predict who will achieve deep and durable remission and who is likely to fail therapy. Dr Roschewski talks about VDJ recombination to look at the kinetics of response in large cell lymphoma and predict relapses. He explains that we don’t know how to improve cure rates for patients who are not cured with standard therapy. After therapy, patients are typically monitored with CAT scans and in their study, they also had a blood test. They found that the blood tests were more predictive of relapse or progression than the CAT scan. Dr Wilson then talks more about circulating tumor DNA and how there is a quantitative relationship between circulating tumor DNA and actual amount of tumor bulk. Dr Alizadeh talks about quantitative reduction in actual circulating tumor DNA and long-term outlook; he explains that the prognostic value of these tests for early response is quite clear. Finally, Prof. Williams talks about the appeal of this technology.
Recorded at the 2016 International Workshop on Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (iwNHL) meeting held in San Diego, CA.
