Jillian Phallen

TL;DR: In patients with resectable colorectal cancers, higher amounts of preoperative circulating tumor DNA were associated with disease recurrence and decreased overall survival, and a method developed by Phallen et al., called targeted error correction sequencing, demonstrates the feasibility of detecting circulating cell-free DNA from many early tumors, suggesting its potential use for cancer screening.

TL;DR: The combination of PD-1 blockade and localized radiation therapy results in long-term survival in mice with orthotopic brain tumors, providing strong preclinical evidence to support combination trials in patients with GBM.

TL;DR: This work demonstrates for the first time that acquired resistance to immune checkpoint blockade can arise in association with the evolving landscape of mutations, some of which encode tumor neoantigens recognizable by T cells.

TL;DR: An approach to evaluate fragmentation patterns of cell-free DNA across the genome was developed, and found that profiles of healthy individuals reflected nucleosomal patterns of white blood cells, whereas patients with cancer had altered fragmentation profiles.

TL;DR: Genetic aberrances in fallopian tube lesions, ovarian cancers, and metastases from HGSOC patients are analyzed and evolutionary analyses reveal that p53 signatures and STICs are precursors of ovarian carcinoma and identify a window of 7 years between development of a STIC and initiation of ovarian cancer, with metastases following rapidly thereafter.