Paolo Cotzia about the ESMO Tumor-Agnostic Classifier taxonomy

Paolo Cotzia shared a post on LinkedIn about recently published paper:

The ESMO Tumour-Agnostic Classifier and Screener (ETAC-S): a tool for assessing tumour-agnostic potential of molecularly guided therapies and for steering drug development.

Authors: C B Westphalen, D Martins-Branco, J R Beal, C Cardone, N Coleman, A M Schram, S Halabi, S Michiels, C Yap, F André, F Bibeau, G Curigliano, E Garralda, S Kummar, R Kurzrock, S Limaye, S Loges, A Marabelle, C Marchió, J Mateo, J Rodon, T Spanic, G Pentheroudakis, V Subbiah.

”The proposed ESMO Tumor-Agnostic Classifier (ETAC) taxonomy to categorize precision therapeutics is a very interesting work.

The ESMO taxonomy is classifying molecularly guided treatment options based on the therapeutic effect obtained by targeting a driver molecular aberration across tumors and its modulation by tumor-specific biology.

Proposed categories are:

• tumor-agnostic (e.g. TRK inhibitors in tumors harboring NTRK gene fusions),
• tumor-modulated (e.g. PARP inhibitors in tumors harboring BRCA1/2 mutation/homologous recombination deficiency),
• tumor-restricted (e.g. PI3K inhibitors in PIK3CA-mutated breast cancer).

Further work is needed to define robust classification cut-offs to categorize precision therapeutics based on the interplay ‘driver molecular aberration’ with modulating ‘tumor-specific biology’.

This work has potential of optimizing drug development and accelerating patient access to effective targeted therapies.”

Source: Paolo Cotzia/LinkedIn

Paolo Cotzia is the Medical Director of Molecular Pathology and Head of Molecular Excellence at Sonic Healthcare USA, as well as the Medical Director of Sonic Reference Laboratory. He is a board-certified pathologist specialized in oncologic surgical pathology and molecular genetics, with expertise in biomarker discovery, molecular diagnostics, digital pathology, AI, biobanking, and clinical trials.