One of the key breakthroughs in molecular pathology, an important part of cancer diagnosis, is a technique called “multiplex immunohistochemistry.” This multiplexing is being developed at GE Global Research in Niskayuna, New York and will be used by GE company Clarient for product development. Multiplexing is just one of several new technologies in the works to help drive innovation in GE’s campaign against cancer. GE Reports talked to John Burczak, Ph.D., Chief Scientist for molecular imaging projects at GE Global Research, about how multiplexing works and how GE’s approach could help provide a more comprehensive view of the disease for doctors.
GE Reports: Can you explain multiplexing?
Dr. Burczak: Multiplexing is a way to extract as much information as possible from a single tissue sample. Once a pathologist looks at a tissue biopsy and believes that it is cancerous, the pathologist can start applying stains to identify specific proteins in the tissue. These proteins and other biomarkers offer insight into the type of cancer, how aggressive the cancer is and which therapies should be considered. Today, the conventional approach is to look at these proteins one at a time. The method we are developing allows us to look at 30 or 40 different specific biomarkers, in a single slice of tissue, without altering or damaging the tissue or biomarkers in the sample.
GE Reports: Why look at multiple biomarkers at the same time?
Dr. Burczak: These multiple proteins give you a signature of what’s going on in the tumor. One protein doesn’t say enough about what’s going on with the cell and how the cancer is behaving. The more proteins you can look at, the more you can learn about that cancer and how it might respond to specific therapies.
GE Reports: Why is it important to create a map of the proteins in a tumor?
Dr. Burczak: These proteins interact with each other so the better the map, the better the navigation in terms of therapy. For example, if you’ve got a very early stage cancer and the molecular signature says it’s not an aggressive cancer, one therapy option might be to remove it surgically. But it might be that you’ve got a combination of proteins that says it’s aggressive, or it might have a signature that says it most likely will respond to a particular drug therapy. So you can say something about the prognosis and something predictive about which therapy the cancer will best respond.
GE Reports: How else does multiplexing technology help with cancer diagnostics?
Dr. Burczak: Clarient has developed some molecular pathology tests that look at many different proteins. One such test, called Pulmotype, determines what type of lung cancer a patient has. One of the big problems with lung biopsies is the difficulty in obtaining enough tissue because the physician cannot remove a large section of lung. With the GE multiplexing technology, even with very small amounts of tissue, Clarient can run their whole Pulmotype test and get a complete analysis.
GE Reports: It seems like oncology is moving from a model where there are a few standard treatments to one with highly individualized treatment plans. Is multiplexing part of this?
Dr. Burczak: It is very well understood that there’s not just one type of cancer. There are many different types of “sub cancer.” For example, one patient’s breast cancer is going to be composed of different proteins than another patient’s breast cancer. They are both breast cancer but they will respond to very different therapies. Multiplex analysis, by segmenting these types of cancer, could help clinicians determine the best therapy choices.
SOURCE
