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April 17, 2015  |  General

AACR 2015: A Novel Look at Cancer, and a New SMRT Sequencing Grant Program

We’re looking forward to the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, which kicks off this weekend in Philadelphia. From directly phasing variants to sequencing full-length gene isoforms and other complex events, many scientists are already using SMRT® Sequencing to make exciting discoveries in cancer research. We hear from customers that the single-molecule approach opens the door for experiments they could not have done any other way.
If you’ll be at AACR, we encourage you to attend the talk from UCSF’s Catherine Smith on Monday at 10:40 a.m. in room 201. Her presentation, “Polyclonal and heterogeneous resistance to targeted therapy in leukemia,” will report on studies of patients with acute myeloid leukemia or chronic myeloid leukemia using the PacBio® system. The team focused on compound mutations, or multiple mutations, often distant from each other, on the same allele. These mutations appear to be indicative of resistance to tyrosine kinase inhibitors, something Smith and her colleagues have explored extensively since their finding that FLT3 is a valid therapeutic target for some patients with leukemia.

There are also posters with data from PacBio studies. Don’t miss the one from scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (abstract #2398) reporting the use of SMRT Sequencing with other technologies to detect and monitor circulating tumor DNA in patients with ovarian or endometrial cancer. In a poster from scientists at Harvard and PacBio (abstract #4898), learn how the use of full-length isoform sequencing in the MCF-7 cell line allowed for the detection of complex splicing events, including novel fusion transcripts in genes associated with breast cancer.
We’ll be kicking off our newest grant program at AACR, giving one deserving scientist free access to SMRT Sequencing for up to four samples. To enter, simply submit a 250-word proposal telling us how targeted long-read sequencing will drive discoveries in your cancer research. Deadline for submission is May 22.  You do not need to attend AACR to enter!
To learn more, please stop by booth #2057, where the PacBio team will be happy to help you determine how SMRT Sequencing could be applied to your research.

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