SC4: TRANSLATING CTCs AND CTDNA FOR CLINICAL USE
Room Location:  151

Sunday, March 10 | 2:00 – 5:00 pm

ABOUT THIS COURSE:

Molecular Tri-Con attendees who would like to learn more about the current landscape of cfDNA and CTC applied to molecular diagnostics will benefit from this short course. The course will focus on cfDNA and CTC isolation and enrichment, assay development and products currently on the market. Finally, the group will see through the eyes of a practicing clinician to gain perspective on the hurdles faced when diagnostics are translated into the clinic.

COURSE AGENDA:

2:00 Moderator’s Welcome

Sonya Parpart-Li, PhD, Senior Research Scientist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

2:05 cfDNA Enrichment and Assay Development

Sonya Parpart-Li, PhD, Senior Research Scientist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

This section of the short course will focus on assay design and development for circulating tumor DNA. Technical challenges that arise from sample preparation will be discussed along with approaches to assay design, such as error reduction. Lastly, the focus will turn to tests recently approved by the FDA for clinical use.

2:50 Refreshment Break

3:00 CTC Isolation, Imaging, Enrichment and Overcoming Bottlenecks to Clinical Translation

Naside Gozde Durmus, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Stanford Genome Technology Center, Department of Biochemistry, Stanford University School of Medicine

3:45 Clinical Utility of cfDNA in Oncology

Prachi Kothari, DO, Instructor, Department of Pediatrics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

This section will focus on the potential uses of cfDNA profiling in the clinical setting for diagnosis, monitoring treatment response, and minimal residual disease. The talk will also touch on the current advantages of cfDNA profiling as well as the hurdles for clinical utilization

4:30 Q&A Discussion

• Pros and Cons of Each Analyte
• Associated Technologies for Isolation and Characterization

5:00 Close of Short Course

INSTRUCTORS:

Sonya Parpart-Li, PhD, Senior Research Scientist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Sonya Parpart-Li received her PhD in Tumor Biology from Georgetown University as part of a Graduate Partnership Program with the National Institutes of Health. Her dissertation work focused on deciphering heterogeneity among hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients at the molecular level using microarrays, functional assays and bioinformatics analysis to assess gene expression and methylation status. In 2014, she joined Personal Genome Diagnostics (PGDx) as part of their R&D team where she has developed next-generation sequencing based cancer diagnostics to address tumor heterogeneity and to detect clinically actionable genetic mutations in a multitude of cancer types. She helped launch the company’s first comprehensive noninvasive diagnostic test for detection of sequence mutations and structural alterations in circulating tumor DNA shed into the blood. Most recently, she led a product development team to create a class II device that detects microsatellite instability in CRC patients. Currently Sonya works as a Senior Staff Scientist in the Department of Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering developing NGS based assays for variant detection in both cfDNA and tissue.

Naside Gozde Durmus, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Stanford Genome Technology Center, Department of Biochemistry, Stanford University School of Medicine

Gozde Durmus is a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University; working with Prof. Ronald W. Davis and Prof. Lars Steinmetz at the Stanford Genome Technology Center. She received her Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering from Brown University in May 2013, with a minor in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship. She is also an alumna of the Ignite Program at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. She was a Fulbright Scholar at Boston University and received her M.Eng. degree in Biomedical Engineering as a College of Engineering Fellow in 2009. She received her B.S. degree in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Middle East Technical University (METU) in 2007. She has been recently recognized among the "Top Innovators Under 35" (TR35) by the MIT Technology Review.

Prachi Kothari, DO, Instructor, Department of Pediatrics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Prachi Kothari, DO received her medical degree from Nova Southeastern University. After completing pediatric residency at the University of Connecticut and pediatric hematology oncology fellowship at the combined programs at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and New York Presbyterian-Hospital, Weill Cornell Medicine, she is presently a clinical instructor in the department of pediatrics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She is also working in the Tsui Laboratory under the mentorship of Dr. Dana Tsui on understanding the feasibility and utility of noninvasive molecular profiling with cfDNA in patients with pediatric solid tumors. Her research projects have allowed her to now work alongside the clinical teams to implement the use of cfDNA analysis into the routine workflow allowing for real-time molecular profiling.

Back To Short Courses