[The contribution of omic sciences for the management of cancer in Chile]. / Planificación sanitaria a partir de los datos ómicos: ¿es posible esta idea para Chile?

With or without a COVID19 pandemic, cancer is and will continue to be one of the greatest health challenges on the planet. In Chile, during 2016, this disease was the second cause of death in the country and during 2019, it was the first cause in seven Chilean regions, surpassing cardiovascular diseases. With the advent of precision medicine as a powerful tool for cancer control, it is necessary to have genomic, proteomic, and molecular data in general, ideally on a population scale. This is essential for decision-making, for example in public and private oncology, to be as cost-effective as possible. Chile has a mass of high-quality researchers in cancer. However, until today the investment in research and development is far below the peers in the OECD. In this work we put into perspective the role of precision medicine and omic sciences as essential tools for public health. We offer a brief national diagnosis of the knowledge collected to date by the local scientific community regarding onco-genomic data from our own population. We finally discuss the potential behind the strengthening of this scientific knowledge, aiming to optimize the comprehensive management of cancer.

Smartphone screen testing, a novel pre-diagnostic method to identify SARS-CoV-2 infectious individuals.

The COVID-19 pandemic will likely take years to control globally, and constant epidemic surveillance will be required to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2, especially considering the emergence of new variants that could hamper the effect of vaccination efforts. We developed a simple and robust - Phone Screen Testing (PoST) - method to detect SARS-CoV-2-positive individuals by RT-PCR testing of smartphone screen swab samples. We show that 81.3-100% of individuals with high-viral-load SARS-CoV-2 nasopharyngeal-positive samples also test positive for PoST, suggesting this method is effective in identifying COVID-19 contagious individuals. Furthermore, we successfully identified polymorphisms associated with SARS-CoV-2 Alpha, Beta, and Gamma variants, in SARS-CoV-2-positive PoST samples. Overall, we report that PoST is a new non-invasive, cost-effective, and easy-to-implement smartphone-based smart alternative for SARS-CoV-2 testing, which could help to contain COVID-19 outbreaks and identification of variants of concern in the years to come.

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Oncology Clinical Research in Latin America (LACOG 0420).

PURPOSE: COVID-19 has affected cancer care worldwide. Clinical trials are an important alternative for the treatment of oncologic patients, especially in Latin America, where trials can be the only opportunity for some of them to access novel and, sometimes, standard treatments. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study, in which a 22-question survey regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on oncology clinical trials was sent to 350 representatives of research programs in selected Latin American institutions, members of the Latin American Cooperative Oncology Group. RESULTS: There were 90 research centers participating in the survey, with 70 of them from Brazil. The majority were partly private or fully private (n = 77; 85.6%) and had confirmed COVID-19 cases at the institution (n = 57; 63.3%). Accruals were suspended at least for some studies in 80% (n = 72) of the responses, mostly because of sponsors' decision. Clinical trials' routine was affected by medical visits cancelation, reduction of patients' attendance, reduction of other specialties' availability, and/or alterations on follow-up processes. Formal COVID-19 mitigation policies were adopted in 96.7% of the centers, including remote monitoring and remote site initiation visits, telemedicine visits, reduction of research team workdays or home office, special consent procedures, shipment of oral drugs directly to patients' home, and increase in outpatient diagnostic studies. Importantly, some of these changes were suggested to be part of future oncology clinical trials' routine, particularly the ones regarding remote methods, such as telemedicine. CONCLUSION: To our knowledge, this was the first survey to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on Latin American oncology clinical trials. The results are consistent with surveys from other world regions. These findings may endorse improvements in clinical trials' processes and management in the postpandemic period.