Speaker Profile
M.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine, Medical Oncology Division, Duke Cancer Institute
Biography
Dr. John Strickler is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Medical Oncology at Duke University. His clinic focuses on the treatment of gastrointestinal malignancies, with a particular emphasis on esophageal, gastric, pancreatic, and colorectal cancers. His research focuses on the design and execution of first-in-human and investigator-initiated clinical trials with correlative studies. He has a particular interest in non-invasive testing to identify and treat genomic drivers of treatment resistance. He has recently served on the ASCO Guidelines Committee for Locally Advanced Pancreatic Cancer, and he is a member of the GI Steering Committee for the Academic and Community Cancer Research United (ACCRU) clinical trial consortium.
Talk
Optimizing the Use of ctDNA to Accelerate Clinical Discoveries
Circulating cell-free tumor DNA (ctDNA) offers a non-invasive means to detect clinically actionable genomic alterations, and is an invaluable tool to identify the genomic basis of acquired resistance. This presentation will provide an overview of how ctDNA can be used to identify predictive biomarkers, monitor clonal evolution, and accelerate clinical discoveries. Examples from an ongoing clinical trial in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer will be presented.