Pam Mangat on the Future of Surrogate Endpoints and Genetic Sequencing in Cancer Care

Surrogate endpoints could eventually add to or replace clinical endpoints in determining a cancer treatment’s effectiveness, according to Pam Mangat, MS, associate director TAPUR study at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). She also said that a deeper understanding of a patient’s genetic makeup and tumor biology in conjunction with new technologies will drive improvements in oncology care.

Transcript (slightly modified)

What are your thoughts on replacing traditional cancer clinical trial endpoints with surrogate markers?

There’s work being done right now as we move towards circulating tumor DNA, and I think there’s a fair bit of evidence right now in the lymphoma literature that shows if a PET scan goes negative after a couple rounds of chemotherapy, that it’s high probability that the treatment is effective. On the flip side, if it goes positive, then it may show that the treatment’s not as effective. These are being studied right now and could eventually add to or replace clinical endpoints.

Do you expect next-generation sequencing technology to drive the field of precision medicine in the near future?

What’s really going to drive improvements in cancer care and patient outcomes is a deeper understanding of 2 things: the tumor biology and the patient’s inherent genetic makeup. And once we have a deeper understanding of these 2 things, combined with or supported by advances in technology, it will allow us to better match treatments to patients and have ultimately better outcomes. So you know, we’re moving towards this and all the progress that we have made so far has been due to a deeper understanding of these 2 things supported by advances in technology.