Using Genomic Technology to Stratify Pediatric Cancer Patients

At the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2018 annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois, E. Anders Kolb, MD, director of Nemours Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders at Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, discussed the exciting possibilities of using genomic technologies to stratify pediatric cancer patients.

Interview Transcript (modified slightly for readability):

“There’s a lot of talk at this meeting and at the national meetings about using genomic technology to stratify patients based on their risks, so patients with certain genomic features may be stratified to non-specific therapies, like bone marrow transplants or more intensive chemotherapies.

There’s talk of using that same information to stratify patients to get specific targeted therapies. I think some of the most exciting therapies out there are the immunotherapeutics, whether they’re the chimeric antigen receptor T cells, antibody drug conjugates, or bispecific antibodies, these are all very exciting novel therapies that can applied to a lot of children with disease, and some of them have minimal or limited toxicity.”