Transcript
Elizabeth McMahon
Coming up, the CAP's quarterly cancer protocol updates include new requirements for a rare breast tumor and expanded testing for GI tumors. Plus, which music group's lyrics get the most references in scientific literature? I'll have the answer next. This is Path News Network Daily Edition from the College of American Pathologists. I'm Elizabeth McMahon. It's Wednesday, September 16th. The CAP today released its quarterly cancer protocol updates affecting breast cancer biomarker reporting and molecular testing for gastrointestinal stromal tumors. As part of their accreditation, laboratories are now required to follow the CAP's breast phyllodes tumor protocol when reporting malignancies in these rare tumors. The revision also includes updates to staging and margin reporting in phyllodes tumors. The release also includes updates to the CAP breast biomarker protocol, including revisions to estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and HER2 scoring and reporting criteria. The CAP also expanded molecular testing and reporting within its gastrointestinal stromal tumor or GIST protocols. The revised protocols now include reporting for GIST tumors across all sites where they commonly occur. For every thousand patients with lung cancer who are eligible for precision care, less than half receive it. Those discouraging results from a 2022 analysis in JCO Precision Oncology form the framework for a CAP 2 6 opening session on the care gap in precision oncology.
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Elizabeth McMahon
Joel Moncur, Chair of the CAP Council on Scientific Affairs, says there are four key practice gaps in pathology for patients who could benefit from targeted therapy. They include test ordering, test performance, test reporting, and neoplastic cellularity, or determining how much of a sample contains cancer. The session will explore these areas with key players.
Dr. Joel Moncur
I'll be hosting a panel with experts from industry on precision care to ask them what they're doing to close these precision care gaps. And then I think we'll end with asking ourselves what we're doing in common, what opportunities we have, and how we might better collaborate and communicate about this issue.
Elizabeth McMahon
The discussion will include insights from CAP proficiency test data and practice questionnaires.
Dr. Joel Moncur
So we'll be reporting on things like a very important neoplastic cellularity study that the CAP did that's helping standardize that testing. We'll be sharing some data from a study that was just completed and is not yet published, but uh is the largest study of its kind on next generation sequencing performance. I think it's going to be the most important study almost ever, ever performed. And uh and I can't anticipate a larger study in the next decade on next-gen sequencing performance.
Elizabeth McMahon
The session on closing the precision care gap happens just after the CAP26 Welcome Breakfast on October 3rd. For years, Dr. Google has been a popular source for questions about what ails us. But increasingly, patients are turning to Dr. ChatGPT to interpret lab results before they speak to their doctor. Pathology reports must evolve so patients can understand what they're reading, says Dr. Kamran Mirza in a new article in the Pathologist magazine.
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Elizabeth McMahon
Mirza, a professor of pathology education at the University of Michigan Medical School, explores several ways pathologists can fill in comprehension gaps, including pathology explanation clinics, where patients and pathologists meet for consultations. Digital slides can also help patients understand their tumors and the margins and lymph nodes involved rather than relying on text.
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Elizabeth McMahon
Mirza says patient-facing pathology reports are particularly valuable in low and middle income settings since the reports may be the only document patients carry with them. And finally, what music artists get the most song and lyric references in scientific literature? Michael Jackson? Elvis? Those are good guesses, but a new study says the Fab 4 get top billing when researchers look for creative wordplay. An article in Plus One this month reveals more than 2,200 exact references and nearly a thousand more instances of Beatles' song titles and lyrics in academic articles. The authors, Beatles' megafans themselves, from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, used AI to analyze references across scientific fields in Scopus and Google Scholar. The most frequently referenced song was Lennon and McCartney's The Long and Winding Road. The authors say they don't know whether Beatles' references shape whether a paper is found, read, and remembered, but their results suggest that, quote, science really does get by with a little help from the Beatles. That's all for today's Daily Edition. Be sure to check the show notes for more information on the quarterly cancer protocol updates and all of today's stories. Got a story you'd like us to cover on the Daily Edition? Write to us at stories at cap.org. We're back at 5 a.m. Eastern for another episode of the Daily Edition. I'm Elizabeth McMahon. Have a great day.