DXRX-The Diagnostic Network®1 and the Italian Society of Pathology2 (SIAPEC) come together to hold a roundtable series around topics of interest for the precision medicine (PM) community. Key opinion leaders across Europe will drive the discussions and share their experience and expertise around testing for specific biomarkers, starting with a webinar series around PD-L1 testing in Italy.
This collaboration between DXRX-The Diagnostic Network® and SIAPEC is aiming to increase knowledge and remove confusion around PD-L1 testing across different diseases, while at the same time mapping the current PD-L1 testing landscape in Italy. The vision around this type of collaboration is to understand where the windows of opportunity are for interventions on the side of SIAPEC, to support labs on the rapidly evolving landscape for opportunities with regards to PD-L1 testing and how the digital infrastructure and lab network of DXRX can facilitate the required interventions. Whether labs in Italy will benefit from educational programs or External Quality Assurance programs will become apparent by the findings of the collaboration for these virtual educational series of webinars. Ultimately, all stakeholders are very motivated to deliver existing and upcoming PD-L1 guided therapy options for patients who benefit from them.
Indeed, it is becoming apparent among professionals that keeping pace with the developments around PD-L1 testing is not easy. Currently, PD-L1 is not tested by molecular biology, it is tested by Immunohistochemistry (IHC). So even if broad NGS panels are requested by clinicians to map predictive targets for the patient’s disease, this will not inform the potential clinical utility of PD-L1 companion diagnostic (CDx) guided therapies. Furthermore, there are diseases for which the clinical validity of PD-L1 guided therapies has already been established e.g., lung and breast cancer. But there are also a rapidly emerging number of indications, for which these therapies are proving beneficial for patients e.g. head-neck cancer and urothelial cancer, in Italy, there is a recent approval for a PD-L1 guided drug as a treatment option for these patients. Additionally, there is interest in PD-L1 in gastric/gastroesophageal as an emerging disease for these potential treatment options.
In order to better understand the landscape in Italy of PD-L1 testing in this complex and rapidly evolving space, labs that participate in the webinars benefit from many incentives offered by their membership to DXRX-The Diagnostic Network®. Labs face major challenges to deliver state of the art services to inform patient treatments, partly due to resource constraints. By being part of the vibrant network on this digital marketplace, labs become part of multi-stakeholder interactions that remove those barriers, and in doing so, enabling themselves to deliver Precision Medicine to patients. This is achieved through the creation of conducive conditions whereby major stakeholders in PM are able to provide the tools that facilitate scientific, evidence based and quality driven precision testing, as illustrated by this knowledge-based collaboration with SIAPEC.
In this webinar series, expect to learn about:
- The clone of the antibody: Depending on what kind of disease is being tested, there are different antibodies which can be used for PD-L1 expression, but in doing so, the specificity and sensitivity of the antibody can vary depending on the platform being used e.g. Ventana, Dako or other. It is important to learn from experts on the disease space who often test for PD-L1 what the recommendations for these aspects of testing are.
- This webinar series will be of interest to labs performing validating studies. This knowledge will help to avoid losing time on testing antibodies with different incubation times.
- Every disease has an FDA approved companion diagnostic kit to test for a particular drug. Scoring is a complex process because for a proper reading the staining of the immune cells or tumor cells, or both, must be taken into consideration due to the fact that these are two different kinds of cells. For example, a specific clone in a specific disease needs to use a specific type of scoring (e.g., TPS, CPS, IC%).
This knowledge exchange driven collaboration is yet another example of the value of DXRX-The Diagnostic Network®, where respected organizations, institutions and industry deliver resources, knowledge, recommendations, technical insight and importantly, an international view. The purpose of this knowledge exchange is the benefit to those the knowledge is there to support – the patients, particularly for patients with no viable options, and off label use may be clinically useful.
Diaceutics is bringing Key Opinion Leaders at the European level to share their insights and experience to deliver Precision Medicine to patients in a diagnostic and therapeutic agnostic manner, meaning no specific tests nor pharmaceutical products are driving the conversation, rather it is the correct delivery of all of them by the experts in this collaborative space.
For access to this webinar and other valuable content learn more about joining DXRX-The Diagnostic Network®
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