“Robbing the array to feed the pore: exploring ultra-fast brain tumor diagnosis” is the title of the session Dr. Simon Paine from Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust in the UK presented at London Calling 2024. What a creative title! Paine is a clinical consultant and neuropathologist. Paine explained that neuropathologists are trying to predict tumor progression. Paine emphasized that the current model is suboptimal. They developed an ultrafast pipeline based on the P2 Solo. Within a couple of hours, clinicians are provided with data about fusions and methylation. Paine stressed the importance of intraoperative diagnosis and information. An example Paine provided of an eleven-year-old child could have avoided a second operation with the data from five minutes of sequencing! Paine is wrestling with the ethical dilemma that sequencing data provided a diagnosis within 24 hours for some cases, yet the standard of care required waiting for results for weeks. This session is thought-provoking. Paine highlighted the ethical dilemmas and the importance of using multiple classifiers.
