Thought Leaders in Liquid Biopsy: A Conversation with Dr. Anne-Marie Martin (Global Head of Experimental Medicine, GSK)
Dr. Anne-Marie Martin is the Global Head of Experimental Medicine at GSK, where her team works on understanding and predicting patient responses to GSK therapies through identification of clinical biomarkers.
Previously, she served as the Global Head of Precision Medicine at Novartis for nearly 5 years, and held a number of senior positions in oncology and precision medicine at Adaptimmune and GSK. She’s currently a member of BLOODPAC’s Executive Committee, and has been involved with the organization since its inception.
Below, we chat with Dr. Martin about the early days of BLOODPAC, the importance of collaboration, and what’s next in liquid biopsy!
You led Novartis' investment and initial funding of BLOODPAC. Can you give us some insight into those early days of the organization?
Absolutely. I heard about the Cancer Moonshot liquid biopsy project in 2016, and I was invited to attend this gathering to brainstorm what we could do as an organization. A number of us met in Peter Kuhn’s [Professor of Biology at USC and current BLOODPAC Executive Committee member] apartment in L.A. during the annual Stand Up to Cancer celebration. That night, we discussed what we wanted to achieve in the liquid biopsy field to help advance this technology into clinical practice. That was the beginning of BLOODPAC, and five years on we have over 60 member organizations! It’s inspiring how such a small group of really dedicated and passionate individuals could set something so special into motion.
Why is collaboration necessary to accelerate liquid biopsy technology adoption?
The beauty of a public-private partnership is that you have the diversity of ideas, experiences, and abilities to be able to advance something. We’re here to solve a problem that is not any one company’s goal, but rather something that’s necessary for society as a whole. We’ve tackled the things nobody else wants to take on, but we still need answers. All our members have made a commitment that we’re in it together, because we believe in the need to advance the clinical utility of liquid biopsies for patients. At the end of the day, every single one of us at some point in our lives will be a patient, and we’re working to ensure that every patient has access to the best possible cancer care we have.
What are some concrete examples of BLOODPAC’s collaboration in action to move the liquid biopsy field forward?
One example is our early work in defining minimum technical data standards for the types of data that need to be collected in any liquid biopsy study. Those standards include information about the steps that you take in sample collection, handling, and storage. Now that’s not sexy stuff, but it’s really important because we need to be able to confidently compare data across platforms from different manufacturers. Ensuring that everyone collects the same type of data with the same level of detail also means we can do meta-analyses of liquid biopsy studies, using shared data platforms like the BLOODPAC Data Commons. I’d also add that we’re also working towards building relationships outside the U.S. such that we can apply the same standards no matter where we’re generating those data. Personally, I think that if we can move towards global standardization in the next few years, that would be huge for the field.
What aspects of liquid biopsy will you be working on in the next five years?
One of the areas of focus for the next five years is to help the field to validate molecular residual disease (MRD) as an early endpoint. Let’s break that down a little bit. Molecular residual disease refers to the presence of circulating tumor DNA in the blood even after a tumor is no longer detectable by scans after surgery or treatment. We know today that if we can detect molecular residual disease in a patient’s blood, they might be at higher risk for a relapse. And therefore, we’re testing whether more vigilant monitoring and aggressive treatment can prevent their relapse. Because we can collect multiple liquid biopsy samples over an extended time period, we can also start to investigate the tumor DNA sequences detected and work to understand why some patients relapse. So beyond giving us more information about the cancer patient, this work will feed more data back into the discovery and development fields. Of course, this is not going to be done in isolation: BLOODPAC working groups are currently engaged in bringing MRD testing into clinical use and defining standards and validation criteria, and I really think it’s going to have a huge impact on future patients.
