ASCO26: AI supercharging gene-based cancer detection, with David Spetzler

In our penultimate video from this year’s LSX World Congress, web editor Nicole Raleigh spoke with Mike Cooke, CEO of AmacaThera, a leading developer of next-generation hydrogel-based drug delivery solutions that enable precise, tunable, and sustained release to improve a wide range of active therapeutics.

AI has implications across the value chain in oncology, including in the diagnostics space, where agentic AI is making it easier to access and understand genomic data – an advance with applications in both the lab and the clinic.

In our first onsite interview from ASCO 2026, pharmaphorum editor-in-chief Jonah Comstock speaks with David Spetzler, president of Caris Life Sciences, about these advances and where they could lead in the near future.

Caris is the largest molecular profiling company on the planet, and they are turning their talents to both cancer research and laboratory screening tests for patients, including a blood-based test.

Spetzler speaks on the importance of chip subtraction to making blood-based cancer diagnosis accurate, the increasing importance of early diagnosis and detection in general, and why whole genome sequencing has broader applications than existing blood testing modalities – so broad that they could go well beyond cancer.

Check out the video to find out where we’re going, what it will take to get there, and why AI alone isn’t enough to ensure success in this growing space. And find our ASCO coverage hub here.