Validating a multiplex immunofluorescence workflow to improve stratification of high-risk, early-stage melanoma samples
 
北京時(shí)間：2021年4月8日（星期四） 00:00
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Overview
Patients with resected stage II–III melanoma have approximately a 35% chance of death from their disease. Currently therapy is FDA-approved for patients with stage III disease and not for stage II disease, even though stage IIC patients die more frequently of melanoma than do patients with stage IIIA or IIIB disease. A deeper understanding of the tumor immune microenvironment is required to improve staging and to stratify patients and identify factors leading to therapy resistance. There is also a need for better spatial phenotypic signatures beyond the well-established biomarkers, to determine which high-risk stage II patients may benefit from adjuvant immunotherapy. We evaluated tumors from patients with high-risk, early-stage melanoma using quantitative multiplex immunofluorescence (qmIF) technology. Using a validated qmIF imaging workflow, we were able to identify individuals who would respond to adjuvant immunotherapy, better stratifying them into high-risk versus low-risk stage II melanoma. Standard staging, risk stratification, and patient treatment for early-stage melanoma is improved with qmIF and could be easily adapted to clinical testing in the future.

In this webinar, viewers will:
Learn about the benefits and limitations of qmIF technology
Find out how qmIF is used to stage patients with melanoma
Discover how qmIF can lead to better treatment stratification of patients with melanoma
Have the opportunity to ask questions during the live broadcast.
  
 
Presenters

Speaker: Yvonne Saenger, M.D.
Columbia University Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center
New York, NY  
Dr. Saenger is the director of Melanoma Immunotherapy and a member of the Pancreas Center at Columbia University Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center. As a pioneer in cancer immunotherapy, she focuses her research on developing new tools for pancreatic cancer patients and patients with melanoma who do not respond to current immunotherapies. This inquiry requires an understanding of how immunotherapy causes perturbations in immune gene expression in blood and tumor samples. Dr. Saenger recently developed an immune panel predictive of clinical outcomes in melanoma; this panel is the basis of a multicenter validation trial in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute. Her ongoing research efforts are aimed at further characterization of the tumor microenvironment, with the goal of discovering biomarkers with more predictive patient outcomes and which are easily reproducible, cost effective, and accurate.
 

Moderator: Jackie Oberst, Ph.D.
Science/AAAS
Washington, DC
Dr. Oberst did her undergraduate training at the University of Maryland, College Park, and her Ph.D. in Tumor Biology at Georgetown University, Washington D.C. She combined her interests in science and writing by pursuing an M.A. in Journalism from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Oberst joined Science/AAAS in 2016 as the Assistant Editor for Custom Publishing. Before then she worked at Nature magazine, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Endocrine Society, and the National Institutes of Mental Health.