I watched a session from the Oxford Nanopore Technologies Clinical & Biopharma Day tonight. It was held on May 24, 2024 (part of London Calling 2024). Professor Pieter Wesseling is from the Princess Maxima Center for Pediatric Oncology in the Netherlands. He is also from the Amsterdam University Medical Centers. He presented the session titled “Ultra-fast Deep-learned CNS Tumor Classification using Nanopore-sequencing During Surgery.” They spoke about the importance of the use of molecular diagnostics in neurooncological pathology. They described DNA methylation arrays as the “new star” in the classification of CNS tumors. Probes are used for profiling, and the metholome profiling has been accomplished through Illumina sequencing. Wesseling and the team developed an ultra-fast real-time system. The work was recently published in Nature. The Sturgeon method was developed and leverages the Illumina 450k DNA methylation information and is used to train classifier models. The research team applied this approach to archival and tumor samples. The initial results were from forty-seven samples, six adults and forty-one kids. The method requires less than a minute of computation on a laptop! The approach was used on a neurosurgical decision to operate a sixty-one year old patient. Wesseling concluded that they have plans to improve the classifier further through collaboration with NIH and retrospective studies. Wesseling concluded by emphasizing the potential in the use of nanopore sequencing. They stated this method could enhance CNS tumor classification. I thought the clinical examples shared and the ultra-rapid sequencing and classification were interesting! I wonder how the Sturgeon system works!
