Pint of Postdoc Speaker Recap - Dr. Aileen I Fernandez

“Biomarkers: Discovering alternative ways to predict patient response to targeted therapies”

Dr. Aileen I Fernandez

Edited by:

Aileen Fernandez

Abstract:

Current biomarkers for Immunotherapies and targeted therapies (i.e. HER2-targeting therapies in breast cancer) are neither sensitive nor specific, but still represent the standard of care. This indicates a great need for improved biomarkers to better identify the patients that will, and will not, respond to therapy. Currently, Aileen Fernandez’s work utilizes two closed-system qRT-PCR systems, GeneXpert^® (GX), to measure mRNA levels of 4 target genes each: (1) ERBB2, ESR1, PGR, MKi67, and (2) PD-L2, PD-L1, CD8A, IRF1, in parallel with other methods to measure protein expression in tissue, including quantitative immunofluorescence (QIF).

For the March 2020 pint of postdoc, Aileen shared about her work looking at tissues from patients with breast cancer prior to receiving targeted therapies. Using the GX system, she showed an improved predictor of response to therapy. She also shared an overview of similar work that looks at the response to immunotherapies.