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Launch Digital Edition

Webinars and Sponsored Roundtables — Register Now

Thursday, April 30, 2026, 11:00 AM–12:00 PM ET
Hear an expert discuss how Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) is utilizing
the oncoReveal® Nexus 21-gene panel to redefine turnaround time and actionable insights
in cancer care. Dr. Ewalt shares a perceptive look at the clinical need for rapid, front-line NGS sequencing, and how a unique, purpose built targeted NGS panel (Pillar Biosciences’ oncoReveal Nexus 21 gene Panel) was developed, validated and implemented clinically by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK-REACT) to complement their current comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) approach.

Webinar presenter Mark Ewalt, MD, Associate Medical Director for Laboratory Operations for Diagnostic Molecular Pathology in the Molecular Diagnostics Service, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, MSKCC.

Moderated by: Bob McGonnagle, Publisher, CAP TODAY

CAP TODAY does not endorse any of the products or services named within. The webinar is made possible by a special educational grant from Pillar Biosciences.

Register Now

Thursday, May 28, 2026, 1:00–2:00 PM ET
This session is designed to improve understanding and application of recent updates to synoptic pathology reporting protocols such as the latest Reporting Template for Reporting Results of Biomarker Testing of Specimens from Patients with Carcinoma of the Breast. These changes reflect evolving clinical guidelines that directly influence diagnostic accuracy and treatment selection in breast cancer care.

Webinar presenters Thaer Khoury, MD, FCAP, Chair, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Cente, and Colin Murphy,  CEO of mTuitive.

Moderated by: Bob McGonnagle, Publisher, CAP TODAY

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Subspecialties

Interactive Product Guides

Abstracts

Clinical pathology selected abstracts

November 2020—Smoking is a leading cause of death in the United States and is associated with many postoperative complications, including increased transfusion needs. Toxins in tobacco that create free radicals that damage the arterial walls and make them more susceptible to rupture and bleeding may be the link between smoking and surgical bleeding. Smoking also impairs tissue healing after surgery, most likely due to reduced oxygenation and altered function of inflammatory cells during the healing process. This may impact bleeding risk in the immediate postoperative period. The authors conducted a study in which they queried the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) Participant Use Data File 2007–2016, which contained data from up to 680 U.S. hospitals, to test the hypothesis that smoking is associated with a higher risk of bleeding in various surgical procedures.

Molecular pathology selected abstracts

November 2020—Sporadic vascular malformations are congenital malformations of arteries, veins, capillaries, or lymphatic vessels, or a combination of these, and are associated with significant morbidity. The majority of them are caused by postzygotic somatic pathogenic variants in oncogenes in the PI3K-MTOR and RAS-MAPK pathways, including within PIK3CA, TEK, MAP2K1, BRAF, and KRAS. Investigators have assessed whether therapeutic agents targeting these pathways should be used to augment or replace traditional surgical management. But because these somatic variants are restricted to cells within the tissue of vascular malformations (VM), it is necessary to conduct genetic testing on the surgically resected tissue to qualify patients for trials of targeted therapies. Approximately 10 percent of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) originates from endothelial cells.

Anatomic pathology selected abstracts

November 2020—Neuroendocrine neoplasms range from well to poorly differentiated and indolent to highly aggressive. The site of origin in metastatic neuroendocrine neoplasms has therapeutic and prognostic implications. SATB2 is a transcriptional regulator involved in osteoblastic and neuronal differentiation and a sensitive and specific marker of colorectal epithelium. The authors conducted a study to evaluate the expression of SATB2 in neuroendocrine neoplasms from various primary sites and its utility as a marker for determining the site of origin of these neoplasms. SATB2 IHC was performed on 266 such neoplasms, including lung small cell carcinomas (n = 39) and carcinoids (n = 30), bladder (n = 21) and prostate (n = 31) small cell carcinomas, and gastrointestinal/pancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasms of various primary sites (n =145) consisting of well-differentiated neuroendocrine tumors (WDNET, n =124) and poorly differentiated neuroendocrine carcinomas (PDNEC, n = 21).

Pathology informatics selected abstracts

November 2020—Telepathology is a leading application for digital pathology. The ability to easily share a digital image in practice offers pathology laboratories clinical, operational, and financial benefits. This is best demonstrated by the longstanding success of telepathology in allowing pathologists to remotely perform intraoperative consultations—that is, to read frozen sections. Neuropathologists were one of the first specialists to leverage digital pathology for this clinical use. The authors, all of whom were from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, performed teleneuropathology at their institution, which implemented the practice 17 years ago.

Clinical pathology selected abstracts

October 2020—Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, some reports linked ABO blood type to severity of the disease and test positivity. Among these were reports that blood type A was associated with a higher risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection and blood group O with a lower risk of infection and mortality. However, there is a paucity of data regarding the relationship between ABO blood type and severity of COVID-19. Therefore, the authors conducted a large multi-institutional observational study to determine if there is an association between ABO blood type and severity of COVID-19 and if those with specific blood types are more likely to test positive for the disease. For the study, they used a large multi-institutional database of adult patients who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 at five major hospitals in Massachusetts from March 6 to April 16. The authors evaluated hospitalization, intubation, and death for an association with blood type.

Anatomic pathology selected abstracts

October 2020—Immune checkpoint inhibitors are frequently used to treat a variety of solid tumors. These drugs involve upregulation of cytotoxic T cells, which can lead to immune-related adverse events, including those involving the gastrointestinal tract. The authors conducted a study to characterize the histological features of immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy-associated gastritis. Gastric biopsies from patients on immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy who had clinical suspicion of drug-associated gastrointestinal injury were identified. The predominant histological pattern of injury, distribution of injury, degree of tissue eosinophilia, and prominence of apoptosis were recorded.

Molecular pathology selected abstracts

October 2020—An increase in the number of copies of a gene, or amplification, is regarded as the most common gain-of-function alteration across various cancer types. The authors developed a bioinformatics tool (Amplicon Architect) to identify extrachromosomal oncogene (ecDNA) amplification from whole genome sequencing (WGS) data based on three characteristic features: circularity of ecDNA, absence of a centromere, and high levels of amplification. The tool was validated in 44 cancer-derived cell lines known to have ecDNA. A combination of centromeric and noncentromeric FISH probes was used to identify extrachromosomal DNA, and the tool was able to classify 83 percent of these signals as representing circular ecDNA amplicons. Interestingly, some of these cases revealed the presence of concurrent extrachromosomal and intrachromosomal signals, suggesting that some ecDNA had reintegrated into the genome.

Clinical pathology selected abstracts

September 2020—The clinical features and immune responses of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 who are asymptomatic are under investigation since people without disease symptoms can unknowingly spread the virus. As of Aug. 3, there were 17,965,128 confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide, 4,749,138 of which were in the United States. The majority of those with SARS-CoV-2 infection have mild to severe respiratory illness with fever, cough, and shortness of breath, which appears two to 14 days after exposure. The authors conducted a study in which they described the epidemiological and clinical characteristics, viral levels, and immune responses in 37 asymptomatic people to better understand the clinical features and immune responses of people who are infected with SARS-CoV-2 and asymptomatic. The 37 asymptomatic people, all in the Wanzhou district of China, were diagnosed with RT-PCR–confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections but had no relevant clinical symptoms in the preceding 14 days or while quarantined at the government-designated hospital for centralized isolation in Wanzhou.

Anatomic pathology selected abstracts

September 2020—Identifying patients who respond to immune checkpoint blockade is a significant challenge in oncology. PD-L1 expression by immunohistochemistry is the diagnostic gold standard for patient selection, but it does not capture all patients who may respond to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB). Recent gene-expression studies of high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma have defined an immunoreactive molecular subtype that shows a measurable favorable difference in patient survival compared with nonimmunoreactive subtypes, but no studies have demonstrated its impact on predicting response to ICB. As a step toward establishing the predictive value of gene-expression classifiers in ICB, the authors assessed the relationship between PD-L1 IHC and molecular subtypes of ovarian epithelial cancer. They analyzed 93 tissue specimens from patients with stages III and IV disease and compared PD-L1 IHC with gene expression by Agilent microarrays using The Cancer Genome Atlas-defined subtypes.

Molecular pathology selected abstracts

September 2020—Whole genome methylation profiling is used to subclassify neuroepithelial tumors and soft tissue sarcomas. Extending its use to much more common cancers, such as prostate cancer, has the potential to benefit a large number of patients. Metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) is the incurable and lethal form of prostate cancer and consists of different subgroups with variable morphologies and genomic alterations. The emergence of distinct subtypes of mCRPC likely represents adaption of the cancer cells to treatment and the microenvironment. The authors conducted a study that integrated methylation profiling with genomic sequencing and RNA transcriptome analysis in 100 mCRPC tumors, yielding a comprehensive molecular profile of these metastatic tumors.

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