Aconstant refrain within the diagnostics industry is a need for standardization. Rapidly developing technology and testing methods, the call for interoperability, and the vast amount of data and information producible via molecular testing makes this even more important. The capabilities of next generation sequencing have provided both opportunities and challenges as clinical laboratories interpret and report results of cancer-related sequencing tests. Now, the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) has released guidelines developed by an industry working group that recommend standard classification, annotation, interpretation and reporting for somatic sequence variants in cancer. The AMP was joined in this effort by the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG), American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), and College of American Pathologists (CAP). "Cancer genomics is a rapidly evolving field so the clinical significance of any variant in therapy, diagnosis, or prognosis should be reevaluated on an ongoing basis by all of the key stakeholders," said one working group member, Marina N. Nikiforova, MD, Professor of Pathology at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, in a statement announcing the release of the guidelines. Nikiforova is also the 2016 AMP Clinical Practice Committee Chair and adds, "These new recommendations resulted from the successful ACMG, AMP […]