Dr. Wang: Genomic data, as well as that the outcome data from the real world patients only enforced. You know my belief but that genomics isn't just possible, but it's essential.
Dr. Venable: Welcome to the Veterinary Cancer Pioneers Podcast, the show where we delve into the groundbreaking work of veterinary professionals who are dedicated to advancing the field of veterinary oncology. I'm your host, Dr. Rachel Venable, and I'm thrilled to embark on this journey with you. This episode is produced and brought to you by ImpriMed, pioneers in an AI-driven precision medicine for veterinary oncology. ImpriMed’s personalized prediction Profile helps you make confident treatment decisions for canine lymphoma and leukemia patients by predicting how your patient will respond to multiple chemotherapy protocol options. Learn more at imprimedicine.com. That is imprimedicine.com.
Dr. Venable: Welcome to the Veterinary Cancer Pioneers podcast. I am so excited today to interview our guest Dr. Guannan Wang. She is the founder of VetOmics. Dr. Wang brings over a decade of expertise in the canine genomics and precision medicine space, and she has a strong focus on advancing cancer care for companion animals. And just to give you all a little bit more background on her, she has been at the University of Pennsylvania and was also at Vidium Animal Health.
She played a key role in bringing genomic diagnostics into routine cancer care for dogs. She's led the development of innovation, genomic tools and precision oncology databases, and I guess she's personally overseeing thousands of reports on genomics, so I dove. I can't even imagine. I struggle reading some of these. So I know she really understands those. Her research has made significant contributions to understanding the genomic drivers, especially of humans, using sarcoma and has shown clinical utility of using genomic testing in guiding treatment decisions, supporting diagnosis, and improving patient outcomes. So really excited to dive more into this. This is a really new and advancing area in veterinary oncology. So Dr. Wang, thank you so much for being with us today.
Dr. Wang: Thank you, Dr. Venable, for the invitation. And it's such a great honor to be here today. I can hardly call myself a pioneer, so I was mostly standing on giants shoulders. So I've been learning along the way with the whole community lifting me up. And so now I love to share what we have learned during this whole journey with you and your listeners. It's a great honor to be here.
Dr. Venable: Thank you. And I think you're being very humble. You are certainly a pioneer. And, you know, I always like to start and just get to know more about you guys. So tell me what got you into cancer genomics precision. And then kind of how you ended up in the veterinary space.
Dr. Wang: Yeah, it's quite non-conventional, right. It's a Chinese-faced individual entering veterinary medicine. So not too common at least during my time when I first came to the States back in 2007 and then PhD training was in molecular and cellular biology, actually at ASU Tempe campus, very close to you. But I was always drawn to research that could have a more direct, clinical impact. So this is why during my postdoc training at UPenn. So I had the privilege of working with my mentor, doctor David Roth, who actually built one of the nation's first, human genomic diagnostic labs. It's called the Center for Personalized Diagnostic Labs. Back in 2012 to 2013. That experience that really opened up the door for me to enter the field of cancer genomic diagnostics. At the same time, both me and Dr. David Roth are hardcore dog lovers. So Dr. Roth, we saw a clear gap between human and veterinary cancer care. Right? And clear unmet need. So that really motivated us to try and to bring precision medicine into a better space.
So I was still very, very selfish, though at the time, this was also a kind of career opportunity for me. So, with our pin that collaborators, and Dr. Nicola Mason and Dr. Amy Durham. So we published some of the early studies on canine hemangiosarcoma genomics and its potential clinical relevance. So that's kind of really how I entered the space of veterinary medicine and have been having fun ever since.
Dr. Venable: What, ended up inspiring you to then, go on past that journey and open your own genomics. So the VetOmics company, what inspired you to do that?
Dr. Wang: Yeah. So a lot of things are right. So precision medicine still was like taking shape back in 2012, 2013. Like a lot of my like a poster, cancer types right where you, you know, see clear, benefit indication, where genomic transform the clinical outcomes such as, chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), breast cancer, melanoma, lung cancer, colorectal cancer, all these poster on cancer cases. But for me personally, when I was invited to speak at AMP, American Molecular and Pathology annual conference, a huge conference that and AACR, American Association of Cancer Research. So this is almost the human equivalent of a VCS in our vet space. And back in 2019 and 2020, it was pretty striking to see study after study showing that genomic guided cancer care really improved the prognosis and survival. Granted, you know, by 2022, a few years back, this conversation has shifted from, “Oh, you know, all we start all these benefits,” to more nuances like resistance mechanism, right? Choosing the right drug, choosing the right patient and the timing. So it's not that simple like, “Okay, when you apply genomic guided treatment it always works.” There's so many nuances to that. But to me, an overall trend at those conferences, the question was never, “Oh, should we do this or should we not do this?” It's a question of “How should we do this? What does it take to do it well?” so that really and I come striking to me. Right. So okay this works but it's complicated. It has a lot of nuances. So after I left Penn, I joined Vidium Animal Health and I had the opportunity to work with that outstanding team, including Dr. Will Hendricks, Dr. David Haworth and the amazing team. So we actually brought genomic data diagnostics into practice. So that was the early experience, right. But for me personally, whether I was at Penn or at Vidium. So I was always there being in the thick of the data. So seeing firsthand, you know, the genomic data as well as the outcome data from the real world patients only enforced, you know, my belief that genomics isn't just possible, but it's essential. This combines my experience in human space. So you ask about you know, what makes us finally decide to, to build, to allow each our own service.
That all makes that so there was also quite a story, but the bottom of it is that the gap of the knowledge was always there from the center of my mind, we have the biggest gap in knowledge. The human precision medicine and the genomic-guided or omics-guided. It didn't happen overnight. It's after sequencing millions of cancer samples, right? And to accumulate that much knowledge so that you can't apply that knowledge back to practice. So of course we are privileged, right, to have the human as our proof of concept. We can learn from that, but we cannot assume that it translates perfectly. So that that really that gap of knowledge is that, always I don't want to say this in a negative way, but it bothered me, that most of the cancers that we are lacking comprehensive or genomic, understandings or most of the cancers and the ones that are, studied are often studied through the lens of equivalent human cancers, which don't fully capture what's unique in, dog tumor genome and that knowledge directly translate into practice.
So it's not just biology, it's not just science that also affects clinical practice. Now that we have multiple narrow human inferred, panel-based, the genomic test sometimes yields empty results, right. That's not ideal. And, even when there is a positive hit, there's always that nagging feeling. “Can this be the real driver of this cancer?” Because the most effective way is to actually target the driver of the cancer so that it will respond, the most effectively. And that second of all, you know, like this is the lack of genomic data and second of all, the lacking primary medical data. I think this is even more, you know, painful for you guys as a clinician, than for me as a genomic scientist, because I'm not dealing with patient care day in and day out. I'm dealing with mostly data. But you know like a lot of these the biomarker drug associations that come from human centric human inference. The right while again we are lucky to have that rich human knowledge. You know, we cannot just take it and assume that it works. So that's also another gap that really motivated us to start Vetomics. Granted, there are other bigger things there we need to figure out as the community like access to drugs, right. Access to better, more drugs. Right now we have a handful in human space.They have hundreds of them. So. But our mission is to deliver the most comprehensive genomic insights, through the highest quality testing so that we can at least start off with the right genomic insights to guide both, you know, clinical practice or drug development down the line so that that's where we come from.
Dr. Venable: Well. I think that sounds amazing. Those are great goals. And you know I love how you said with genomics it's not the question shouldn't be should we do it or not. It should be how. You know, how we do it. And I think, yeah, that's so true. You know, how we use this, how you know, what is the best. And so you were diving into this. What would you say with knowing the genomic sequencing like doing VetOmics. How would you say that those results will help with, you know, diagnosis therapy selection, prognosis. What do you see as the main, the most helpful or kind of where you're focusing? Cause I know you mentioned like we need to start learning about some of these different areas, but where do you see it being the most effective array now?
Dr. Wang: Right now, therapy for sure. You know we know that currently genomics is now, you know, at the core of almost every aspect of cancer care in people. But we are still quite young in that development phase. So right now, the primary role of genomic testing is, treatment selection is to guide therapy choices. So with our comprehensive genomic profiling we can provide treatment recommendations across targeted therapies that are available in the vet space, immunotherapies that we are lucky to have them and chemotherapy and radiation therapy. So really so therapy selection or stratification is the primary role. And that's what, what the doctors that, use us for. Right. So, yeah. And, but that being said, we have been seeing an increasing utility of, genomics in the diagnosis as well, especially in those that, you know, challenge to diagnose cases that a where genomics actually can pinpoint, you know, which which one is it in the like otherwise, equivocal case that based our cytology based or histology. So we have one third of those cases that could benefit from genomic testing. Yeah. Even diagnosis. Yeah. Prognosis right now the way most of the prognostic biomarkers come from humans. So I make it very clear that just because we find a prognostic biomarker that predicts poor outcome in human cancer doesn't mean that we should stop treating the dog, it doesn't mean, you know, we need to really evaluate this in the canine primary patients. Yeah.
Dr. Venable: It's interesting. You mentioned diagnosis because I remember hearing a pediatric oncologist once and she was talking about how they sequenced every tumor. And that's really helped them, especially with some of the more rare types, but that they always do sequencing. And that just kind of opened my eyes because I was like, oh, we don't do that.
Dr. Wang: Yeah. Not yet. We don't.
Dr. Venable: And so you mentioned, you know, like trying to figure out like the driver, like what could be the driver of the mutation and the cancers essentially are are you guys looking into trying to figure that out. How do we figure that out? How do you go about it? Because I agree with you. That is the ultimate question. But how do we answer that?
Dr. Wang: So this is the primary. My job is to figure out we have a lot of databases now, right? We have a lot of AI assisted prediction algorithms so after all that annotation and interpretation, it still comes down to what we think is the primary driver for this particular tumor, right? Or this particular dog?
Dr. Wang: And there's many steps, to kind of prioritize that. The first thing is getting into the weeds. But I love it. So like whether we have, for example, a new frequency of variants. No, whether it's 60% or it's 3%, that makes a huge difference. Right. So even if we find a traditionally oncogenic mutation, a well-established oncogenes mutation, it's only present in 3% of the cancers of the tumor cells.
And while this tumor, the overall tumor purity is 90%. Do you think this is the main driver? Probably not. Right. That's why, you know, a lot of these, you know, like the BRAF trials that didn't work as it's expected probably because of Braf. Although Braf is present, it's not the main driver. You know. And then there are like a copy number level of copy number changes. Whether this is a 38 copy number or this is a 2.5 copy number gain. We would definitely prioritize the higher copy number gain. And before that, we have to find what are the potential cancer genes. This is where you know we can really leverage the human cancer human databases. So that only although I do want to say that we should leverage that. But also don't overlook the fact that we may be able to find a novel, cancer genes that are specific for dogs that have not been, like defined as cancer genes that in human cancers. Right, that it's a complementing process. And hotspot mutations, so this is all taken care of by the databases, by the algorithms. Right. And at the end of the day, you have to figure out the level, you know, what could be the main, the most likely driver. And sometimes there are several like multiple angles that we can target, which is not the best case scenario. You know, I can say that, oh, this case is full of potential clinical action abilities. You know, we can't I think any of this, therapeutic access that won't go wrong. You know, you can't open the door for us to combine, right. Combine different therapies. So we have, quite some, exciting data coming out. Yeah.
Dr. Venable: Really cool. What would you say is often the most actionable finding? And does it often change how clinicians treat you? And you know, how much you hear back from them, what they decide to do?
Dr. Wang: Yeah. So the big component now is that we feel okay, we got the genomics covered. So we are on the right foot for providing the best unbiased, genomic insights. So the next thing we want to do is that we don't have a lot of the large scale prospective studies that test, you know, drug versus biomarkers. So we kind of have to do that in, through what we call hypothesis driven clinical studies.
So we hypothesized that the human inferred drug biomarker associations, if only it provides a foundation for us to treat. But we really have to follow that. But in that framework, we have to come back to outcome research, follow up that means with the patient and to see whether the genomic guided treatment actually improves outcomes. Right. So that's the essence of what we do. You know, we I know we are a genomic diagnostic company, but I don't consider that getting a genomic report from us is the end of our service. We need to follow up with our doctors, our owners, and really trying to get every dog that comes into our door is a data that we can and should learn from.
Dr. Venable: Were are you collecting data? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. So you're getting data.
Dr. Wang: We are getting outcome data from the patient from the dogs that did, canine GPT test and are treated sometime they are treated sometime they're not though we could get to that later. But yeah, that's the, you know, overarching goal. We want to follow up.
Dr. Venable: And that's something that your goal is to see, you know, how is it working, especially if you do have some dogs that don't do it. That's kind of a nice control group in some ways because, you know, they're mutations. And they did it. So is the hope to not only help your research but then publish it out to the community?
Dr. Wang: I have got quite some publications. I do think these are real data that can help feed back into how we treat how we even recommend advanced cancer care. So yeah. We say it's the real world, right? And it's the we're. First off we are not alone to like to put more emphasis, partly it's the by not by choice. So we would love to have some prospective studies. For almost ten years that I’ve been doing this, that we haven't been able to do, you know, even launch a couple of them so that I think we have to really value and emphasize the value of a real world, patients that follow up and there's, like a there is that even on a human side, that there's the new type of clinical trials? It's called a pragmatic clinical trial. And it also shifts the conventional, prospective trial where you have to have such, stringent control. Right. And, and all these different criterias as well right now. So we kind of open it up to the patients. Right. And this not only validates, you know, the efficacy of the drug, but also the effectiveness, in a very noisy, you know, bag around the population. But if that is the signal, we see the signal in this group. So then it's a real signal. That's the hope.
Dr. Venable: So are you guys working with any other groups like clinical trials or are you there any. Because I know you work with a lot of prominent oncologists, so I didn't know if any of those guys were running trials or what all you were up to.
Dr. Wang: But we have quite a few studies that are underway. Some we wrote grants for and some we are, you know, collecting data. Yeah. So quite, quite a few of them, you know, like spanning targeted drugs there as well at target eight. But when I say targeted drug set I meant small molecule inhibitors. So but I know this means very differently in that clinician’s perspective. Targeted drugs as well as immunotherapies that we are actually involved in a few of them for hopefully right now. So some of them are post, retrospectively, right where we see whether, you know, by now there is always, for any given drug, at least from what I heard, there's always these external responder groups and there's always these that are, you know, like no responder group whatsoever. And so, you know, we want to see, okay, so can we see any correlative biomarkers, to stratify the two groups. And then from there now we can design prospective studies.
Dr. Venable: Right, I'll have to look out for those different studies for sure.
Dr. Wang: Yeah we're relatively young but we're large not too long ago. But yeah, I'm so glad I'm just so grateful for the trust. And, I know a lot of the doctors that partners have placed in us and that’s really something that we need to work really, really hard for.
Dr. Venable: So what would you say you're seeing, you know, talking about the different treatments and things? Do you see genomic sequencing and like the targeted therapies or the small molecule inhibitors as more of the the main like solo treatment, or are you seeing that this works a little bit better if, let's say you combine chemo and then add in like a targeted or a mutant, like a basically a multidrug treatment. What are you seeing the better outcomes, if you can say that if you're seeing a trend.
Dr. Wang: Yeah. So there was a learning curve for me too. So I'd love to share what I have learned. At first, being a genomic scientist that, you know, data day in and day out, I think, okay, so when we have this perfect driver, when we have this drug that can target that, this driver, the doctors they have to treat with this, they'll abandon all the other treatment plans that use this. That was kind of naive. Later I learned that, now it's not always that simple, you know, like what the dog was already on makes a huge difference whether they respond or not. It's easy if it doesn't respond to a previous treatment. And there you can kind of switch out. Right? But most of the time it's okay. You respond to stable disease. So at this time but not quite you know, halt the progression okay. So a lot of doctors, they actually add in combined target therapies or immunotherapy to the standard of care chemotherapy. And so that's you know, really I think boost the survival curve at least based out, you know, like a small cohort that we have followed up so far. So it really is combination therapy, I think right now is definitely the way to go. So it's like it's not a clean cut. It's not replacing standard of care therapy with genomic-guided therapy. It's complementing, adding-in. Right. So that you can, you know, really push that survival curve out by a lot.
And when I say that's another thing, is that when I say targeted therapy and targeted therapy, I think we should kind of step back. And really so it's not just the targeted therapy, it's immunotherapy as well. It's anything that's a basically biomarker driven biomarker guided right. Therapy a lot of the immunotherapy from the human side is also guided by biomarker prediction. For example, the famous Keytruda PD-L1 antibody, it's primarily used by stratification as the PD-L1, IHC as well as the tumor mutation burden and sometimes in specific cancers, the micro, satellite instability, MSI. I think, you know, when we talk about targeted therapy, we shouldn't, you know, focus on the small molecule Libertas. Immunotherapy is very well in this group that can be stratified and as predicted by the genomic biomarkers.
Dr. Venable: It's a good point. I hadn't really thought of that. Really accurate.
Dr. Wang: But yeah, it's, you know, I think eventually that biomarker, stratify biomarker-guided treatment to which include small molecule inhibitors, the immunotherapies, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy is that very, very broad category.
Dr. Venable: Yes. Yes, it's very broad. And so what advice would you give oncologists that are considering adding in genomic testing. Because like we talked about this is a newer field something we're learning about. So how do you recommend people think about this or go about it?
Dr. Wang: You know by now, I think a few years into it everybody at least they have heard of it. So, but there's a lot of different voices, right there. For example, the hesitation can come from, you know, there's not enough data, not enough PKPD, not enough clinical data, right. Which is true. But we also should not wait for the primary prospective study to happen right? In the meantime, we can do a lot of things. No. We can treat the dogs with genomic idea treatment and a follow up and see whether this works and, and learn from there and, feed back into the cycle. Right. So I think we, we actually both anecdotally but also by small cohorts, you know, that we published and others published have shown that genomic guided-treatment actually improves outcome as up to date now.
So we cannot say that we don't have any data. We don't have as much data that are exist for people. But we have accumulated quite some data. I hear this all the time that the doctors that actually text me pictures or call me know when the dog responded beautifully to a treatment. Right? That really makes, you know, my day every time. So I think we work for that. We want to see that kind of risk response for all of our patients. So hopefully that's the goal. And second of all, there's also, I think, unknowns about the size, the, the biology, you know, do we really think that this the human driver is also the driver in dog cancer.
So I think that's another thing. I think, of course, the functional validation in cell lines is critical to prove the functional impact of a mutation, oncogenesis. Right. But I think equally important, it still unpicks all the cancer of the tumor genome, the background. Going back to the example, just because you have BRAF mutation at 3%, it might not do anything to your treatment. Right. So it's really you know what other Co-mutations occur. How do we compare everything? And what comes up on top as a most putative driver. And now we deal with that. So this is also a kind of learning process that I learned from like some of our patients if we prioritize this drug and then it doesn't respond. So I will say, okay, so then in this cancer type with this mutation, then the dog doesn't respond in this context. So that's also, you know, we kind of iterate, right? So what's the best? You know, recommendation. What's the best prioritization for that next one?
Dr. Venable: Yeah. That is really interesting. And just like you said I'm sure you have a crazy algorithm trying to figure out all this data. It sounds quite complex, which is great. I think that's good.
Dr. Wang: Yeah. It's getting more, more complex that we get to learn so much of the insides of the, or the tumor genesis the right, the biology. But also drug resistance is like a mechanism. We can see clearly, you know, how this tumor tree evolved under certain drug treatment and, come out like a new escape, that treatment, and they come out and you metastasize to a new site to to a new, essentially a new tumor. So it's pretty amazing.
Dr. Venable: What have you found working on, you know, both the human genome and the dog genome. Is the dog genome a little bit simpler because they're so inbred or is it actually more challenging? Just kind of curious, the comparison between the two.
Dr. Wang: To say that they are comparable or not is oversimplifying. I think each cancer type, each individual can have very, very different, different mutation profiles, even the same cancer types. Right. So it can sometimes be a high tumor mutation burden and sometimes can be a high copy number alterations that are extensive. But you can see this genome wide. So we use some of these. The genome wide features actually are also sometimes a diagnostic I don't want to, you know, like comparing humans. For example, breast cancer to canine mammary tumors. So we definitely see some of the more prominent drivers there. Right. But they also have a different background, the context. Right. That's why when we publish, we tend to really try to grab the best story. What is the best story line? What is the story that can get us funding, for example. Or we don't tend to like a report with all the noise. So right. There's a very clear story line. How do we package this data? Right. To say it's actually, you know, now I see the data like it's not always that. Okay. Canine mammary tumors have PIK3CA mutations that are similar to human breast cancer? Definitely not even 50% all but mammary carcinoma has the PIK3CA, there is that a lot more to that than those that I know well pig to I don't want to say cherry picked because they are real, but they are like to over amplified or over amplified a signal oncogenic mutation the osteosarcoma for example.
So it's not only that it doesn't only involve mutations in TP53, 32. Right. And a few other, epigenetic modifiers. It's so much more than that. It can involve like, expensive, copy number alterations that in, double strand DNA repair pathways that, that sometimes that can actually help me diagnose the osteosarcoma because, when you see, like when the dude cob differential alpha A, an equivocal case that is, is the osteosarcoma versus the hemangiosarcoma.Then these still have no wide features that I can really oh, push it more or one another. So I guess the short answer to your question is that we definitely see a lot of similarities. Right. And the famous oncogenic mutations or famous signaling pathway, oncogenic signaling pathways that are parallel between human cancer and canine cancer. But there's also, you know, like a lot of the cases that don't have these typical signals, but they are there. They're still called the same thing, cancer.
Dr. Venable: So what do you think the impact of precision medicine will be on the conversation between veterinarians and pet owners? Like what? Especially when they're discussing treatment options.
Dr. Wang: I hope by now a lot of the pet owners that you know from their own experience, right, already know that the concept of precision medicine, right. So I think we now say that okay, instead of, you know, giving, you know, one size fits all standard of care therapy like a splenectomy followed by doxorubicin, you know, for the hemangiosarcoma. Now we can try something different. We'll treat your dog based on their genomic profile that is identified in his tumor. And then we can combine that or we can treat that agent. And so I think it's really an evidence-based and a science-based approach. I would think that most owners would appreciate that because as you guys know, you probably have more experience. You do it like the first line, right? Just as I do it with the data. In your experience, take hemangiosarcoma, for example, the disease comes back a lot of times that right came back metastasized. So I think here. So instead of replacing so so where we're adding in we are complementing okay. So we can try new drugs, these new therapeutic options that might fit your dog's cancer better than the standard of care therapy.
Dr. Venable: I definitely found a lot of owners are somewhat familiar with genetic sequencing as far as you know, even commercials on TV talking about some of the targeted drugs or, you know, breast cancer, lung cancer. So I agree, I certainly think they have heard of it. You know, maybe not always understand exactly what's going on, but I think it does help with the conversation.
Dr. Wang: Yeah, I hope so. And again, as we do more of the testing and we publish so and we you know, everyone that uses genomics in all of their patients, they don't see benefit. Now we need to have a conversation, you know, whether we are doing it right or, you know, what's the problem. But, you know, I help most of the doctors that are that, you know, use us.
See, the benefit, at least for, you know, a certain type of cancer, but from a like, aggregated, data point of view. So we actually see pretty well represented cancer types throughout most common cancer, rare cancer. We hope that everybody can see the benefits. And then this you know like a ghost eye and a positive feedback. Right. And we have to publish.
Dr. Venable: To do your tests. What kind of tissue samples? What do you guys need to run the sequencing?
Dr. Wang: We can actually run our test on a wide range of samples. FFPE, so that's the most common diagnostic specimen type for that allergy sample. Fresh, frozen tumor. Fresh tumor. So that's our favorite kind. And urine, effusion, bone marrow and blood for leukemia, make it in, you know, full blast. So that's, that's the common type that we have used so far to cut biopsy. So we, you know, we can, you know, have optimized workflow for a lot of these different cancer types. And we have been, so far, we have not failed to, to generate a report for any of our cases that we have now over three, 300 cases now among these, one case needed for a second sampling. This is the early days where we were still, you know, optimizing the workflow. And, we have 19 cases that need a second workflow to attempt to like a hybrid prep redo library prep or re-sequencing. But overall, I think, the yield is very, very high quality is very high as well.
Dr. Venable: Samples that needed the additional were those cytology samples generally?
Dr. Wang: The ones that people that need us that can sampling is that at first, you know, naively I was thinking, oh, okay, let's do FNA liquid instead of FNA slide. FNA slide is the common sample type for genomic testing. Right. And the viability is turned out much better than the cells being liquid. And so the cells don't survive in liquid for, for very long. So we learned that from that patient early days. But ever since we switched to FNA slide, we didn't have issues. Yeah. Sometimes we know the intrinsic quality of the FFPE can be harsh on DNA. Right. So sometimes we encounter DNA from a FFPE sample. Even with those we have, like, we sometimes have to sequence a couple more times in order to get to the target coverage. But, yeah, with being able to do that and really have, you know, like at the end of the day, it's, how much inside to right that you can provide that you feel. Okay, this makes sense. We're not missing anything.
Dr. Venable: This has been fantastic. I love hearing about all the differences with genomics and how we can use it. And, before we wrap up, how can people hear about you or get in touch with you? Do you want to mention, like, your website or how would you like, you know, anyone listening to learn more?
Dr. Wang: So vetomicsanimalhealth.com is our website. And so we've been fortunate enough to have a lot of support from the community that we started our own podcast, Precision Medicine. And, so where we, you know, kind of having this, engaging conversations, with oncologists who have experience, who have a lot of experience that and just that talk openly about the ins and outs challenges that, you know, that's the thing that I really want to focus on. What are the challenges that we use in genomics today? And of course, the promise is that that's my, that's what I like to hear. Right? And, you know, like the success stories that and the really so the goal is to, I call demystify, genomic testing, precision medicine. Right. So we have a lot to learn, but I think we are finally on the right trajectory that, you know, we can really relate, you know, whether this will truly help and, how what do we need to do to make it work?
Dr. Venable: Sounds like lots of information. Great ways to learn more and to reach out to you guys and get more information. And so kind of last question, as a wrap up, who is someone else that you would recommend for this podcast?
Dr. Wang: I've been following your podcast. I know you always. So you kind of already interviewed everyone that I want, I put a comment so but I don't think you have the interview Dr. Barbara Kitchell, she is still down to earth. And she asked the most, sharpest question and, you know, really made us all think she doesn't have to do what she does now. She is still pushing the boundaries and trying to bring more drugs or dogs to use. Dogs and cats. I think she's someone that I would recommend.
Dr. Venable: Yeah, those sound great. And you're right, we have not interviewed Kitchell, so that certainly is a great recommendation. So Dr. Wang, thank you so much. This has been so insightful and I've learned a lot. I know our audience will too. So thank you again for being on our show.
Dr. Wang: Thank you for having me.
Dr. Venable: Well, that's it for this episode of the Veterinary Cancer Pioneers podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and gained valuable insight, we would be so grateful if you could share our podcast with your friends and colleagues. And it would be even more wonderful if you want to give us a five-star rating, positive review, or any kind of feedback on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. The Veterinary Cancer Pioneers Podcast is presented to you by ImpriMed.