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Webinars and Sponsored Roundtables — Register Now

Thursday, October 29, 2026, 1 PM-2 PM ET
Hear an expert discuss the evolving role of PD-L1 testing in HNSCC and ovarian cancer.

Webinar presenter Georgios Deftereos, MD, Professor of Pathology, Associate Director of the Clinical Cancer Genomics Laboratory, Director of Molecular Cytopathology, University of California, San Francisco

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

Moderated by: Bob McGonnagle, Publisher, CAP TODAY

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Tuesday, November 3, 2026, 1 PM-2 PM ET
Hear an expert discuss the challenges of detecting NRG1 fusions and how RNA-based testing can support more comprehensive fusion identification in clinical practice.

Webinar presenter Benjamin Weinberg, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine and Attending Physician
specializing in gastrointestinal medical oncology

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

Moderated by: Bob McGonnagle, Publisher, CAP TODAY

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Tuesday, November 10, 2026, 1 PM-2 PM ET
Join us for a session to help improve diagnostic accuracy in your practice when scoring HER2 IHC 0 with faint, incomplete membrane staining in ≤10% of tumor cells vs IHC 0 with no membrane staining detected in patients with mBC.

Webinar presenter Jeffrey Gregg, MD, University of Nevada

CAP TODAY does not endorse any of the products or services named within. This program is being sponsored by Daiichi Sankyo, Inc. and AstraZeneca. The speaker is being compensated for the presentation. The program is not CME accredited and may not be used for CME accreditation.

Moderated by: Bob McGonnagle, Publisher, CAP TODAY

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Monday, November 16, 2026, 12:30 PM-2 PM ET
Hear experts discuss a multidisciplinary approach to oncopathology for HER2
assessments for solid tumors in the absence of a companion diagnostic.

Webinar presenters Funda Meric-Bernstam, MD, Chair, Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics Medical Director, Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, and Emina E. Torlakovic, MD, PhD, College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, Canadian Biomarker Quality Assurance, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, and Carol Cheung, MD, PhD, JD, FRCPC, Deputy Director, Canadian Biomarker Quality, Assurance—Programme canadien d’assurance de la qualité des biomarqueurs

CAP TODAY does not endorse any of the products or services named within. This program is being sponsored by Daiichi Sankyo, Inc. and AstraZeneca. The speaker is being compensated for the presentation. The program is not CME accredited and may not be used for CME accreditation.

Moderated by: Bob McGonnagle, Publisher, CAP TODAY

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Abstracts

Clinical pathology selected abstracts

December 2020—The National Academy of Medicine estimated that approximately 30 percent of U.S. health care spending constitutes nonvalue-added waste. This waste may be generated through unnecessary laboratory tests and services, inefficiency of care delivery, ex­cessive administrative costs, and high prices. A goal of medical educators is to inform undergraduate medical students about health care management and health care delivery to make them better stewards of cost-effective, high-value care (HVC). The authors described the results of a needs analysis to inform the design of an online case-based educational tool for teaching laboratory stewardship to medical students. To this end, they conducted a needs assessment that included semi-structured interviews of core clerkship directors and residency program directors, a national survey of the Undergraduate Medical Educators Section of the Association of Pathology Chairs, and a review of existing online resources for teaching HVC. Their results showed that all of the core clerkship directors and residency program directors thought that teaching laboratory stewardship as part of the undergraduate medical education (UME) curriculum was important. The two major themes that emerged from the analysis to enhance laboratory stewardship education were appropriate test ordering and interpretation. The authors also found several organizations that provide HVC education through online modules or clinical cases.

Anatomic pathology selected abstracts

December 2020—It can be difficult to distinguish metastatic melanoma from melanocytic nevi in lymph nodes. Because diffuse IHC PRAME (preferentially expressed antigen in melanoma) expression is detected in the majority of primary and metastatic melanomas, but rarely in nevi, the authors conducted a study in which they hypothesized that PRAME could be a useful adjunct marker for the diagnosis of melanocytes in lymph nodes. They examined 45 nodal melanocytic deposits comprising 30 nodal nevi and 15 melanoma metastases. The latter were not straightforward from a diagnostic perspective because they coexisted with nodal nevi or were present in perinodal fibrous tissue. All nodal nevi were negative for PRAME and all melanoma metastases were diffusely positive for PRAME IHC.

Molecular pathology selected abstracts

December 2020—Next-generation sequencing-based mutation testing of various cancer types is clinically indicated and widely used to diagnose disease, inform potential therapeutic targets, prognosticate disease course, and monitor responses to targeted and nontargeted therapies. The genetic variants discovered by tumor-based next-generation sequencing (NGS) can be somatically acquired by the neoplastic cells or a fixed inherited component of the patient’s germline genome. Distinguishing the germline versus somatic status of tumor NGS-defined variants is of significant clinical importance not only for patient care but possibly for patients’ families. Because many cancers have a substantial inherited component, the discovery of a pathogenic germline mutation by tumor-based NGS may have substantial familial implications. For example, being aware of a cancer risk allele, such as BRCA1, can lead to the use of highly effective interventions to prevent or treat the related cancer in family members. Consensus guidelines recommend germline genetic testing only for those cancer patients who have a clinical presentation or family history suggestive of hereditary disease.

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.

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