CMRI’s ProCan hosted its inaugural national symposium on Clinical Proteomics at the Westmead Innovation Centre in Sydney on 23 November. It was an opportunity for clinicians and researchers from diverse disciplines as well as key decision makers to connect and discuss how best to harness the power of proteomic technology to improve disease diagnosis and treatment planning.
Navigating the pathways that need to be taken for proteomics to enter routine clinical use was a major theme. “It's not just about discovery, it's about making a real difference in patient care," pathologist Prof. Rita Horvath emphasised.
Consultant haematologist, Dr Peter Mollee's use of proteomics to diagnose amyloidosis much more accurately was an outstanding example of protein analysis by mass spectrometry being applied in a leading hospital clinic.
A/Prof. David Stroud presented ground-breaking work on the ability of proteomics to rapidly confirm the diagnosis of mitochondrial diseases. These uncommon conditions can be difficult to diagnose definitively, and the proteomic technique he outlined looks set to replace the current method of evaluating mitochondrial protein function in the near future.
Medical oncologist, Dr Liz Connolly said “From a clinician’s perspective, one of many highlights was Prof. Fernandez-Penas’s ongoing development of a ‘scarless biopsy’ technique that analyses cells peeled from the surface of skin lesions. Diagnosing early melanomas with certainty by visual inspection is difficult even for dermatologists who specialise in this area, so to ensure that all malignant lesions are safely removed by surgery many suspicious-looking benign skin lesions currently need to be removed as well. Successful development of accurate scarless proteomic analysis of skin lesions could significantly reduce the need for surgical skin biopsies.”
Prof. Mark Molloy presented work on development of a serum proteomic signature to detect bowel polyps which could potentially reduce the need for colonoscopy in the future.
CMRI Director Prof. Roger Reddel summarised ProCan’s progress in developing clinically applicable tissue proteomic technology and the large-scale research being done with hundreds of collaborating medical oncologists, pathologists and cancer biologists to develop the evidence base needed to use this information in the cancer clinic.
Dr Rosemary Habib presented some of the work she has done using ProCan’s technology to analyse colorectal cancer and devise new treatment strategies.
Dr Dinny Graham presented the results of a proteomic analysis of a large number of triple negative breast cancers, and a step-wise approach to classification that could potentially be used in future to inform treatment decisions.
An area of research where proteomic technology has a major advantage is the analysis of the non-cellular material in which cancer cells are embedded, the extracellular matrix (ECM). ECM proteins featured prominently in the work of Drs Habib and Graham. Dr Amelia Parker presented her work on spatial omics which highlighted the role of the ECM, and provided important new insights into predicting tumour spread.
Prof. Jean Yang presented computational methods for finding valuable information that might otherwise be hidden within heterogeneous data sets.
The symposium concluded with a panel discussion chaired by Dr Douglas Campbell, regarding the hurdles that need to be overcome to provide the benefits of proteomic analyses to patients.
ProCan co-director, Prof Phil Robinson said there was a strong feeling of camaraderie among all of the meeting participants who are pioneering the use of this technology in their own areas of medicine and are eager to learn from the experiences of other researchers.
The organisers thank Bruker and Accurate Mass Scientific who helped to sponsor the symposium, as well as all of the speakers who shared their work.