EDRN Reference Set Call

Wednesday, October 7, 2026

Present (Attendees at meeting in BOLD):

NCI: Guillermo Marquez, Indu Kohaar, Christos Patriotis, Matt Young

DMCC: Ziding Feng, Jackie Dahlgren, Royce Malnik, Yingye Zheng

GI:

• Colon: MD Anderson: Robert Bresalier (Chair)
• Pancreas: NYU Langone: Anirban Maitra
• University of Minnesota: Tim Church

Lung:

• Vanderbilt: Stephen Deppen (Co-chair)
• Boston University: Marc Lenburg
• Meso Scale Diagnostics: Martin Stengelin
• University of California, Los Angeles: Tran Linh

Prostate:

• Eastern Virginia Medical School: John Semmes
• Johns Hopkins: Hui Zhang
• University of Michigan: Javed Siddiqui

Breast/GYN:

• Arizona State University: Karen Anderson
• Massachusetts General Hospital: Steven Skates
• Johns Hopkins: Zhen Zhang
• Meso Scale Diagnostics: Martin Stengelin

Current Action Items:

1. ONGOING: Ashkan Afshin/Novelna: This application will be reviewed by the November call. Steve Skates will provide a summary of today’s call to the assigned reviewers, gather their reviews and draft a response letter.
2. ONGOING: Prostate Discovery Set: Liang Zhao: Steve Deppen will send an approval letter to him.
3. ONGOING: Participation by All Working Group: Robert Bresalier will email the working group and remind those who don’t attend the calls to make a point to attend in the future.

Discussion:

• BRS: Ashkan Afshin/Novelna Inc.: This is for the Breast Reference Set (not BRS-I).  Asking for plasma. The Breast/GYN Collaborative Group will review before it comes to the Working Group for review. Comments from the RSWG: only give them 400 uL not 600 uL; provide an inventory—ask them to justify the 500 uL request.  Steve Skates will contact the assigned reviewers Karen Anderson, Chris Li and Yingqi Zhao (who is optional) with a summary of today’s discussion and ask for their reviews.  Once he receives that information, he will draft a letter to Dr. Afshin.
• Prostate Discovery Set: Liang Zhao: An approval letter needs to be written—Stephen Deppen will send.
• Availability of Inventory of Reference Sets on EDRN Website: The members of the RSWG asked for a readily available inventory of the numbers and aliquot amounts of specimens available from each reference set. The DMCC and JPL have been working on this.

Next Call: Wednesday, November 4, 2026 at 8 a.m. Pacific/11 a.m. Eastern.