Trevor J. Pugh, PhD, on Reducing the Burden of Serial Testing for MMRd With 1 Sequencing Protocol

To discuss a new strategy for detecting mismatch repair deficiency (MMRd), CancerNetwork® sat down with Trevor J. Pugh, PhD, of the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto, the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre at the University Health Network, and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research in Toronto, who introduced a novel integrated targeted sequencing protocol that tests for a number of tumor biomarkers from a single aliquot of DNA.

Pugh and his colleagues aimed to reduce the burden of serial testing by developing a single protocol that had a similar output to the multiple tests that are used currently.

“The real challenge here was not just reducing the complexity of cascade testing, but also extracting as much information from a single piece of tissue, a single biopsy, or a single aliquot of DNA as we could from a single test,” Pugh said.

According to Pugh, results showed the feasibility of this approach, with the potential to eventually reduce the complex clinical testing workflow.

This segment comes from the CancerNetwork® portion of the MJH Life Sciences™ Medical World News®, airing daily on all MJH Life Sciences™ channels.

Reference:

Oldfield LE, Li T, Tone A, et al. An integrative DNA sequencing and methylation panel to assess mismatch repair deficiency. J Mol Diagn. 2021;23(2):242-252. doi: 10.1016/j.jmoldx.2020.11.006