CAP TODAY Pathology/Laboratory Medicine/Laboratory Management
Putting pathology at the center of precision medicine
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Putting pathology at the center of precision medicine
Michael H. Roehrl, MD, PhD, pathologist and director of the Precision Pathology Biobanking Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, would like to see more joint development of companion diagnostics—pathologists and industry working together. It would lead, in his view, to better companion diagnostics.
“We need to promote the novel idea that pathologists should take part in the design and execution of clinical trials and that we are central to drug development,” he says. Today, as he sees it, companion diagnostics are developed by industry and “imposed on pathologists.”
Dr. Roehri
Dr. Roehrl, an advocate of pathologists practicing “transformative pathology,” designed the Precision Pathology Biobanking Center around five pillars, one of which is becoming a pathology hub for clinical trials. The others are biobanking, precision pathology informatics, new pathology technologies, and R&D commercial partnerships for companion diagnostics.
“The molecular assessment of specimens puts pathologists at the center of enrolling patients in clinical trials,” Dr. Roehrl says. “Basket trials”—focused on specific targetable mutations shared among tumors of different primary sites—“have changed the landscape. Now pathologists must become leaders in those trials.”