Single cell analysis from a clinical perspective | Ralph Weissleder | SCP2018

Presentation by Ralph Weissleder at the first single-cell proteomics conference (SCP2018): https://single-cell.net/proteomics/sc... Serial tissue sampling and analysis has become essential in guiding modern targeted and personalized cancer treatments. An alternative to image guided core biopsies are fine needle aspirates (FNA) that yield scant cells rather than tissues but are much better tolerated and have lower complication rates. The efficient pathway analysis of such cells in the clinic has been difficult, time consuming and costly. In this presentation, I will address three clinical questions: How can we determine if a patient benefits from a given therapy ? How does human biology work at the systems level ? How can we detect cancer much earlier when it is curable ? I will showcase some single cell analytical technologies that have been developed in our lab and then discuss future opportunities for proteomics for specific applications. It is hoped that some of these future approaches will allow robust analysis of single cells in routine clinical settings, improve diagnosis and yield a deeper understanding of human biology.