Precision Molecular Analysis: Examples in Oncology

Prof. Klaus Pantel is Director of Institute of Tumor Biology, Full Professor of Medicine at the University Hospital Eppendorf (UKE) in Hamburg, Germany. He is also a visiting Professor of the University of Bergen, Norway. Prof. Pantel was the scientific coordinator of the CANCER-ID consortium (2015 – 2019) and is the founder and president of the European Liquid Biopsy Society (ELBS). His research focus is on Liquid Biopsy (circulating tumor cells and circulating nucleic acids) and cancer metastasis. Prof. Pantel is a member of different Societies, like the European academy for Tumor Immunology (since 2016), the American Association for Cancer Research (since 1991) and the German Cancer Society (since 1991).

Dr. Pierre-Jean Lamy is clinical biologist and Head of the Department of Genomic and Biopathology, Imagenome at Labosud in Montpellier. He founded Imagenome in 2015, a molecular laboratory dedicated to the detection of DNA alterations in cancers. Imagenome is part of the clinical laboratory group Labosud-Inovie, France. Dr. Lamy is a specialist in biomarkers of solid tumors, especially breast, prostate and lung cancers, as well as for liquid biopsy and circulating tumor DNA analysis. Dr. Lamy led many translational research projects on prognosis and predictive biomarkers. His research aims to improve personalized medicine focusing on molecular-targeted agents and related biomarkers.

Dr. Athina Giannoudis is Senior Research Associate in the Molecular and Clinical Cancer Medicine at the University of Liverpool. She has a BSc (Hons) in Medical Microbiology from the University of Surrey, an MSc in Medical Genetics with Immunology from Brunel University and a PhD in Molecular Pathology from the University of Liverpool. She started her research career in the University of Sheffield where she worked on the development of a macrophage-based system to target therapeutic viruses to prostate cancer before returning to the University of Liverpool to work on pharmacogenetics and drug transport assays to assess how the malignant cells of chronic myeloid leukemia adapt to different tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Her current research focusses on the use of advanced molecular technologies to analyze patient-derived material (tissue and liquid biopsies) to determine and characterize the molecular events that take place during the development of therapy resistance in advanced breast cancer, the genomic landscape of breast cancer brain metastases and the role of micro-RNAs in breast cancer brain metastases.

Technologies and Thermo Fisher, as Applications Scientist where he gained broad technical expertise for PCR, qPCR, Sanger Sequencing, and NGS and over time gathered experience across a wide menu of applications while getting more and more focused on the clinical field and on hematology and oncology in particular. For the past 10 years he has managed various customer collaborations and international consortia in this field. In 2015, Dr. Sartori joined Agena Bioscience. In his current position, he leads Agena Bioscience’s Scientific Affairs oncology activities globally with a focus on high sensitivity detection of somatic variants in solid tumors and liquid biopsies. Dr. Sartori is based in Hamburg, Germany, where Agena Bioscience operates its European office.