Publications by authors named "Stephanie B Hastings"

Disparities in cancer diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes based on self-identified race and ethnicity (SIRE) are well documented, yet these variables have historically been excluded from clinical research. Without SIRE, genetic ancestry can be inferred using single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) detected from tumor DNA using comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP). However, factors inherent to CGP of tumor DNA increase the difficulty of identifying ancestry-informative SNPs, and current workflows for inferring genetic ancestry from CGP need improvements in key areas of the ancestry inference process.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the differences in immune gene expression and survival outcomes between HER2-low and HER2-zero breast cancers, focusing on the tumor immune microenvironment (TME).
  • Comprehensive genomic analysis was conducted on samples from 129 patients with advanced HER2-negative breast cancer, assessing immune-related gene expressions and their correlation with patient survival rates.
  • Results indicate that while there were no significant differences in immune gene expression between HER2-low and HER2-zero cancers, patients with HER2-low tumors exhibited a higher rate of estrogen receptor positivity and significantly better overall survival.
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Introduction: Younger patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) (<50 years) represent a significant patient population with distinct clinicopathological features and enriched targetable genomic alterations compared to older patients. However, previous studies of younger NSCLC suffer from inconsistent findings, few studies have incorporated sex into their analyses, and studies targeting age-related differences in the tumor immune microenvironment are lacking.

Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis of 8,230 patients with NSCLC, comparing genomic alterations and immunogenic markers of younger and older patients while also considering differences between male and female patients.

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Background: Cancer-testis antigens (CTAs) are tumor antigens that are normally expressed in the testes but are aberrantly expressed in several cancers. CTA overexpression drives the metastasis and progression of lung cancer, and is associated with poor prognosis. To improve lung cancer diagnosis, prognostic prediction, and drug discovery, robust CTA identification and quantitation is needed.

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Genomic profiling is critical for precision oncology to guide treatment decisions. Liquid biopsy testing is a complementary approach to tissue testing, particularly when tissue is not readily available. The Labcorp Plasma Focus test is a circulating cell-free DNA genomic profiling test that identifies actionable variants in solid cancers, including non-small-cell lung, colorectal, melanoma, breast, esophageal, gastroesophageal junction, and gastric cancers.

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