Spatial Protein and RNA Profiling: Seeing the Unseen in the Tumor Microenvironment

Discover a groundbreaking webinar delving into the benefits of digital and quantitative multiplexed assays for protein and RNA tumor microenvironment profiling. Pancreatic and colorectal cancer are two of the four tumor types with the highest aggregate mortality rates in the United States. Despite extensive research, genomically-directed therapies benefit only a minority of these patients. The Wolpin-Nowak laboratory at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute works to understand the cellular composition and functional status of these deadly tumors in order to detect cancer earlier and develop new therapies for patients.

To accomplish these goals, the experts from Leica Biosystem use digital imaging, supervised machine learning, customized analysis pipelines and in-house developed multiplex assays designed specifically for interrogating these tumor types. They design these assays to be run in an automated, reproducible manner that enables uniform analysis of many specimens. Cumulatively, they have analyzed tissue from more than 4,000 patients across large landscape cohorts of tumors and as part of clinical trial correlative studies.

In this webinar, the featured speaker will review representative multiplexed assays for protein and RNA profiling that have been built in the lab and will discuss the necessary elements to operationalize this type of testing in a translational research laboratory. He will also explore the advantages of different types of assays and key considerations for ensuring consistently high data quality at the scale spanning hundreds to thousands of specimens.

Join this webinar to gain insights into spatial protein and RNA profiling for pancreatic and colorectal tumor microenvironment analysis.

Speaker

Jonathan Nowak, MD, PhD, Molecular and GI Pathologist, Brigham and Women's Hospital & Assistant Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Jonathan Nowak is a Molecular and Gastrointestinal Pathologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and an Assistant Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He is board-certified in anatomic and clinical pathology and molecular genetic pathology. As the associate director for the Brigham and Women’s Center for Advanced Molecular Diagnostics, Dr. Nowak oversees next-generation sequencing assays for solid tumors and hereditary cancer predisposition. Dr. Nowak also runs a research laboratory at the Dana-Farber focused on multi-omic tissue-based analysis of pancreatic and colorectal cancers.

Message Presenter