Afsheen Raza

National Center for Cancer Care and Research (NCCCR), Qatar

Title: Pre-treatment serum profiling of immune checkpoint mediators as predictive biomarkers of response in Non-Small cell lung cancer patients treated with anti-PD-1/PD-L1

Biography

Dr Afsheen Raza is currently working as Post-Doctoral Research Scientist in Translational Cancer Research Institute, National Center for Cancer Care and Research, Hamad Medical Corporation, Qatar has 16 years research experience, 40+ peer-reviewed publications, author of 3 book chapters, editor for Intech Open Book on Immune checkpoint inhibitors, PLOS One, Frontiers in Immunology and Biomarker Insights. She has done PhD in Molecular Biology from The Aga Khan University, Pakistan. She was certified on Cancer Biology and Therapeutics from Harvard Medical School, USA. Her primary research focus on Tumor-host immune interactions to immunotherapeutic strategies, establishing immune-monitoring platforms, developing tools to evaluate novel immune modulators of cancer antigen specific immune cells for translational research, Studying biomarkers of response in immunotherapy treated patients, Main area of interest- Lung Cancer, Head and Neck Cancers and Gastric cancer.

Abstract

There is limited data on the predictive biomarkers of response to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. The main aim of this prospective study was to understand the utility of pre-treatment soluble immune checkpoint markers as surrogate markers for tissue PD-L1 and as predictors of response in locally advanced/metastatic NSCLC patients treated with ICBs.