CLN Daily 2024
Mass spectrometry is a versatile analytical method that can be used to characterize the abundance of proteins in tissue samples, assess post-translational modifications, and evaluate protein interactions on an unparalleled scale. In the Monday morning plenary, titled “Lymphoma Biomarkers and Therapeutic Targets From Mass Spectrometry-driven Proteomics,” Kojo S.J. Elenitoba-Johnson, MD, from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center described how this wealth of proteomic data could help healthcare professionals to better understand the genesis of lymphomas and drive the development of precision oncology therapies.
Elenitoba-Johnson is a hematopathologist, physician-scientist, and chair of the department of pathology and laboratory medicine. He emphasized the laboratory’s critical role in achieving this powerful technology’s full potential through its application to patient specimens and tissues.
“As laboratorians, we are curious, detail-oriented information integrators,” he said. “We sit at the nexus of basic science and the implementation of therapies and diagnostics.”
For that reason, clinical laboratory professionals must advocate for themselves to avoid being relegated to ancillary technical roles. Instead, they should strive to become integral parts of the interdisciplinary team that actively impacts patient care.
Using lymphoma biomarkers as a template, Elenitoba-Johnson described the cycles of innovation through which mass spectrometry (MS)-driven proteomics for oncology is evolving, from a nascent technology toward a mature application that is ready for routine clinical use.
There are barriers that must be overcome before MS-based proteomics can be translated into clinical settings, Elenitoba-Johnson acknowledged. These include limited throughput, the need to develop requisite technical expertise, and the need to identify the precise use cases that justify adoption in the clinical laboratory. In particular, he emphasized the importance of using informatics experts to analyze the complex datasets yielded by MS-based proteomics.
“Today, a complex series of workflows are needed, but I will ask people to stretch their minds to think about how this [technology] could be used in a clinical context and envision a scenario where it would be translatable,” he explained. Indeed, the microbiology laboratory has already adopted MS-based proteomics for routine clinical workflows in transformative ways that would have been difficult to imagine only two decades ago.
That’s one reason Elenitoba-Johnson remains confident that this modality’s superior precision and novel information will significantly benefit patient care. While there will be challenges along the way, MS-based proteomics has the potential to transform precision oncology and is well worth the effort to implement, he emphasized.