Svetlana Nikic, Founder and Principal of Precision Oncology Consulting, shared on LinkedIn:
“This year’s European Society of Pathology annual congress was a busy time, so I haven’t attended as many sessions as I would have liked – nevertheless, here are a few key takeaways and why they matter for the scientific/clinical community:
The Pathology Workforce Gap
In line with other reports, the shortage of healthcare workers is real and will keep growing. For pathologists, the distribution is worryingly unequal: Africa averages fewer than 3 pathologists per 1 million people, while 47% of the world’s population has little or no access to basic diagnostics.
Even wealthy health systems are struggling. In the UK, which has around 57 pathologists per 1M people, 78% of pathologists consider current staffing insufficient to sustain services or meet growing demand.
Why this matters clinically: every molecular result starts with a pathologist.
Whole-Genome Sequencing: Roche AXELIOS 1 VS Illumina
Edwin Cuppen presented data comparison for tumor/normal WGS – data showed approx. 99% concordance across 1,229 reported cancer-related events, with high concordance across SNVs, indels, CNAs, fusions, TMB, MSI, HRD/HRP and HLA typing. The modelled cost per T/Nl WGS analysis at 90×/30× coverage was approximately 29% lower on Axelios than on NovaSeq X 25B.
Tumour-Informed MRD on AXELIOS 1
Foundation Medicine representative presented early-access data of Axelios for MRD detection. Throughput and quality control met expectations, while SNV sequencing accuracy exceeded expectations while, MRD positivity was modestly higher with Axelios. The apparent advantage was concentrated in stages I and II. Data were also shown with Axelios having lower cfDNA background error, which may improve detection of very low tumour fractions.
These findings support Roche’s potential for low-tumour-fraction detection, but prospective clinical validation is needed to show that the additional positive calls accurately predict recurrence and improve patient management.
AstraZeneca’s session showed that ctDNA liquid biopsy is performed in only 29% of responders’ labs for advanced NSCLC (28 respondents), when tissue is insufficient/inadqueate – lack of reimbursement is still the main barrier.
A new EQA programme for CGP was announced for 2026 by EMQN CIC.
HRD Classification Remains Method-Dependent
Four approaches (Foundation Medicine, DRAGEN by Illumina, HMF’s probability of HRD and Myriad Genetics HRD score) across 12 samples showed that 5 of these were classified differently across methods, proving that HRD is not an interchangeable biomarker across platforms. Evidence dossiers, treatment decisions, and reimbursement policies should specify the assay, algorithm, threshold, and validated clinical context rather than treating ‘HRD-positive’ as a platform-independent result.”
Other articles featuring Svetlana Nikic on OncoDaily.
