Dr. Jun J Yang will provide an overview of the current paradigm of precision medicine in blood cancers and the limitations of the genomics-centric approach. Focusing on ALL as a model, he will discuss the complexity of leukemia genomics and how it influences response to a variety of therapeutic agents, but more importantly how direct profiling of drug sensitivity ex vivo can complement genomics to inform treatment selection. He will also summarize recent technological advances in this space, especially those enabling microfluidic assays and drug combination testing.   

Dr. Mika Kontro will discuss the latest advances for personalizing AML therapies using functional screening. He will provide an overview of the current data implementation and share insights from ongoing perspective trials employing functional screening, as well as the successful outcomes from the completed trials. Furthermore, Dr. Kontro will focus on the Ven Ex trial, which demonstrates the predictive value of ex vivo drug sensitivity testing to identify AML patients who can benefit from the azacitidine-venetoclax regimen. 

Dr. Pamela Becker will discuss the role of functional screening in identifying potential therapeutic options for rare blood disorders including rare myeloproliferative or myeloid neoplasm subtypes, atypical or refractory lymphoid malignancies, and extramedullary presentations with few or no standard approaches. She will describe the available methodology for drug sensitivity testing for the tissues involved and describe successes for individual patients on clinical trials and in published reports. She will demonstrate how a combination of molecular understanding and functional testing can provide complementary data to optimize therapy and yield exceptional responses, now collectively beyond “N-of-1.”