Discovery research to clinical trial: a ten year journey

Clinician-scientists have the training and motivation to translate basic science into tools for improved clinical care, but the road to achieve this is hardly straight forward, particularly for large scale genomic datasets. This year's Joe Doupe Young Investigator award winner, Dr. Torsten Nielsen, details successful examples of new scientific insights, diagnostics and clinical trials that have resulted from microarray-based gene expression profiling of sarcomas: TLE1 as a biomarker for synovial sarcoma, histone deacetylase inhibitor therapy for translocation-associated sarcomas of young adults, and CSF1 pathway inhibitors for tenosynovial giant cell tumors. Results from exciting, emerging next generation sequencing technologies will need to undergo similar validation and preclinical studies before they can be expected to impact patient care.