Statistical Bioinformatics Webinar: Uhrig -- Gene Fusions in Solid Tumours: From Novel Discoveries to Diagnosis to Treatment

Presented by Dr.  Sebastian Uhrig, German Cancer Research Center 

The MASTER (Molecularly Aided Stratification for Tumour ERadication) program is a
precision oncology trial for patients with advanced-stage disease.  The trial recruits
patients of young age or suffering from rare cancer types.  Multi-omics assays are used
to create a molecular profile of the tumors with the goal of finding genetic aberrations
which can be exploited therapeutically.  Gene fusions play an important role in this
setting, since many of the soft-tissue sarcomas which are part of the MASTER cohort are
associated with oncogenic driver fusions.  Often, the detection of a pathognomonic
fusion serves to confirm or refine the diagnosis of a patient.  More importantly, many
fusions are recognized as potent drug targets and are therefore of central interest to
the program.  Furthermore, the multi-layered, in-depth analysis of each patient
recruited in the MASTER trial has repeatedly revealed novel insights into the biology of
cancer.  After careful study and experimental validation in the context of basic cancer
research projects, such findings can ultimately be translated into clinical practice.