Stuart and Molly Sloan Precision Oncology Institute Liquid Biopsy Symposium Agenda

Welcome and introduction

12:30 p.m. - 12:40 a.m.

Pelton Auditorium, Weintraub Building
Fred Hutch Cancer Center

Keynote | Extracellular vesicles in precision oncology: Engineering isolation, profiling, and therapeutic applications

This talk will highlight emerging roles for extracellular vesicles in precision oncology, with a focus on engineering strategies for their isolation and molecular profiling from liquid biopsy samples. I will discuss how extracellular vesicle based technologies can improve cancer detection, disease monitoring, and treatment selection, as well as their potential as therapeutic delivery platforms. Key opportunities and challenges in translating these approaches into clinically meaningful applications will also be addressed.

12:40 p.m. - 01:15 p.m.

Pelton Auditorium, Weintraub Building
Fred Hutch Cancer Center

Bootstrap reconstruction of latent CTC dynamics

CTCs and CTC clusters are rare entities that are laborious to collect but highly prognostic. This talk describes methods for rapid, low-cost approximation of longitudinal CTC dynamics, leveraging the concept of the idealized latent.

01:15 p.m. - 01:35 p.m.

Pelton Auditorium, Weintraub Building
Fred Hutch Cancer Center

Decoding tumor gene expression from liquid biopsy

Gene expression profiling has broad clinical utility but remains largely dependent on invasive tissue biopsies. This talk will highlight DRAGN-X which was developed to enable liquid biopsy–based assessment and provides a framework that reconstructs quantitative transcriptomic profiles directly from tissue and circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) methylation data.

01:35 p.m. - 01:55 p.m.

Pelton Auditorium, Weintraub Building
Fred Hutch Cancer Center

Decoding functional tumor biology from cell-free DNA

Understanding a tumor’s molecular phenotype and therapeutic vulnerabilities requires information beyond its mutations. In this talk, Dr. Patton will trace the development of computational methods that interpret cell-free DNA fragmentation patterns, progressing from nucleosome profiling and tumor phenotype inference to deep learning–based prediction of tumor gene expression. Examples across cancer types will illustrate their potential to support minimally invasive characterization and monitoring of tumor biology.

01:55 p.m. - 02:15 p.m.

Pelton Auditorium, Weintraub Building
Fred Hutch Cancer Center

Snacks and Refreshments Available

02:15 p.m. – 02:25 p.m.

Weintraub Building Great Hall
Fred Hutch Cancer Center

Keynote | ctDNA kinetics as an intermediate trial endpoint

This talk will examine (1) data supporting early on-treatment changes in ctDNA fraction as an accurate therapy response biomarker in patients with metastatic cancers, (2) unknowns and data gaps that currently limit widespread clinical adoption of ctDNA kinetics as a biomarker, and (3) efforts to develop ctDNA kinetics as an intermediate or surrogate endpoint for early phase clinical trials.

02:25 p.m. - 03:00 p.m.

Pelton Auditorium, Weintraub Building
Fred Hutch Cancer Center

Talk Title TBD

Talk on early detection. Talk description to follow. 

03:00 p.m. - 03:20 p.m.

Pelton Auditorium, Weintraub Building
Fred Hutch Cancer Center

ctDNA testing for therapeutic monitoring

This talk will cover ctDNA assays developed and implemented in the CLIA-lab setting in our system harboring low-pass whole genome sequencing for monitoring cancer therapy response.  These low cost and relatively rapid NGS assays can also detect changing RNA signatures of cancer over time such as neuroendocrine transformation.  The assays are currently in use for prospective clinical trials at FHCC.

03:20 p.m. - 03:40 p.m.

Pelton Auditorium, Weintraub Building
Fred Hutch Cancer Center

CSF liquid biopsy for pediatric CNS tumors: launching a clinical platform

This talk will discuss the development of a clinical-grade CSF liquid biopsy assay and Dr. Crotty's ongoing efforts to integrate this test into routine clinical care for children with brain tumors. She will also discuss the emerging role of CSF ctDNA as a predictive biomarker for molecular disease monitoring and risk stratification, alongside efforts to analytically validate and standardize testing across laboratories.

03:40 p.m. - 04:00 p.m.

Pelton Auditorium, Weintraub Building
Fred Hutch Cancer Center

Refreshments Available

04:00 p.m. – 04:10 p.m.

Weintraub Building Great Hall
Fred Hutch Cancer Center

Keynote | Advancing liquid biopsy studies in Ghanaian breast cancer patients: from circulating tumor DNA to EM-seq methylation profiling

Liquid biopsy approaches have the potential to expand molecular characterization of breast cancer in settings where access to tumor tissue and advanced diagnostic testing may be limited. Building on the Ghana Breast Health Study, this presentation will highlight work demonstrating that circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) is readily detectable in plasma from Ghanaian breast cancer patients and that genomic features identified in ctDNA point to aggressive molecular phenotypes. More recent cell-free DNA analyses and EM-seq data are investigating epigenomic and methylation signals that may provide complementary information about tumor biology. These studies illustrate both the scientific opportunities and potential value of liquid biopsy approaches for studying aggressive breast cancer in resource-limited settings.

04:10 p.m. - 04:45 p.m.

Pelton Auditorium, Weintraub Building
Fred Hutch Cancer Center

Liquid biopsy for early cancer detection: What to know and what to ask in a new era of cancer screening

In this presentation, Dr. Etzioni will review metrics for and data on cancer screening efficacy with a focus on multi-cancer early detection tests. She will touch on the challenges of evaluating these tests in a timely fashion and highlight the information that will be needed to determine whether they are ready for population screening.

04:45 p.m. - 05:05 p.m.

Pelton Auditorium, Weintraub Building
Fred Hutch Cancer Center

Talk Title TBD

Talk on MRD & clinical trials. Talk description to follow. 

05:05 p.m. - 05:25 p.m.

Pelton Auditorium, Weintraub Building
Fred Hutch Cancer Center

Closing remarks

05:25 p.m. - 05:30 p.m.

Pelton Auditorium, Weintraub Building
Fred Hutch Cancer Center

Hors d'oeuvres and beverages with symposium speakers and attendees

05:30 p.m. - 06:15 p.m.

Double Helix Cafe, Weintraub Building 
Fred Hutch Cancer Center