The Precision Medicine meeting will outline the steps needed to personalize therapy and make it available to patients and physicians. This year’s exciting agenda will take a comprehensive look at the construction of gene panels, the use of molecular assays for selecting patients for treatments including but not limited to immunotherapy, the computational tools that allow sharing of data amongst institutions and enable improved medical decision making and patient outcomes. Leaders of the community will convene to talk about how precision medicine is transforming the field of medicine, accelerating biomedical discoveries and enabling the accurate diagnosis and treatment of disease.
Scientific Advisory Board
Mark S. Boguski, M.D., Ph.D., Founder & CMO, Precision Medicine Network, Inc.
Harry Glorikian, Healthcare Consultant
Stephen F. Kingsmore, MB, ChB, BAO, DSc, FRCPath, President and CEO, Rady Pediatric Genomics & Systems Medicine Institute, Rady Children's Hospital, San Diego
Monday, February 20
10:30 am Conference Program Registration Open
11:50 Chairperson’s Opening Remarks
Harry Glorikian, Healthcare Consultant
12:00 pm Accelerating Precision Health for All
Stephanie Devaney, Ph.D., Deputy Director, All of Us Research Program, NIH
The National Institutes of Health seeks to enroll one million people in a national effort to learn more about individual differences that influence health and disease. The Precision Medicine Initiative® Cohort Program will empower participants, health care providers, and researchers to work together, creating a new model of research to accelerate science and improve the health of future generations.
12:30 Cancer Moonshot as a Model for Precision Medicine
Aristides A.N. Patrinos, Ph.D., Senior Adviser, United States Secretary of Energy and Programs and Policy Advisor, Synthetic Genomics Inc.
In his last State of the Union Address, President Obama announced the “Cancer Moonshot” initiative and asked Vice President Biden to lead the effort. Understandably there was much skepticism about yet another “war on cancer” especially one started during the waning period of the Administration. Despite that skepticism, significant progress has been achieved particularly in novel ways to take on the cancer scourge.
1:00 Session Break
1:10 Luncheon Presentation I: Unlocking Precision Medicine: Convergence is the Key
Mark Boguski, M.D., Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Precision Medicine, Inspirata
Precision cancer diagnosis requires integration and analysis of diverse technologies and data types, ranging from gross anatomy to macromolecules, from whole-body images to circulating tumor DNA. The convergence of radiology, pathology and genomics is the future of precision cancer care.
1:40 Luncheon Presentation II (Sponsorship Opportunity Available)
2:10 Session Break
2:30 Chairperson’s Remarks
Mark S. Boguski, M.D., Ph.D., Founder & CMO, Precision Medicine Network, Inc.
2:40 Computational Pathology: Precision Diagnoses and Beyond
Jeffrey A. Golden, M.D., Ramzi S. Cotran Professor & Head, Pathology, Brigham & Women’s Hospital
Computational Pathology leverages the vast, data rich information acquired on patients to inform Precision Medicine. The basic tenets of our approach include: 1. Integrate multiple sources of raw data. 2. Generate algorithms and mathematical models to test hypotheses and statistically validate the data at molecular, individual, and population levels with the goal to provide tools for diagnostic inferences and predictions. 3. Presentation of clinically actionable knowledge to the end user.
3:10 Precision Medicine beyond Oncology
Marielena Mata, Ph.D., Head, Precision Medicine, GlaxoSmithKline
Precision Medicine is often associated with Oncology where the ability to select patients for targeted therapies has resulted in increased efficacy. Yet, the use of biomarkers and companion diagnostics is becoming an important strategy to better identify the patients that will benefit the most from the safe and efficacious use of treatments in other therapeutic areas. We will review the current state of Precision Medicine and identify opportunities and challenges outside of Oncology.
3:40 Precision Microbiota Applications in Clinical Therapy and Diagnosis
Lynn Bry, M.D., Ph.D., FCAP, Director, Massachusetts Host-Microbiome Center, Pathology, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
The microbiota, or compending of organisms living on and in us, provide essential functions for normal health and physiology. They also contribute to a variety of diseases. This non-human organ is also increasingly being used to develop and target new therapies for a variety of conditions, from Clostridium difficile colitis, to treatment of IBD, and other autoimmune, allergic and metabolic diseases.
4:10 Presentation to be Announced
4:25 Presentation to be Announced
4:40 Refreshment Break and Transition to Plenary Session
5:00 Plenary Keynote Session
6:00 Grand Opening Reception in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing
7:30 Close of Day
Tuesday, February 21
7:30 am Registration Open and Morning Coffee
8:00 Plenary Keynote Session
9:00 Refreshment Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing
10:05 Chairperson’s Remarks
Harry Glorikian, Healthcare Consultant
- What does result mean?
- What do I do with it?
- How do I manage patient?
10:15 Precision Cancer Medicine at the Bedside – The Provider Perspective
Stacy W. Gray, MD, AM, Associate Professor, Population Sciences, Division of Clinical Cancer Genetics, City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center
Rapid advances in genomic technologies are revolutionizing oncology. However, genomic data are complex and often highly uncertain in nature. Even after genomic data have been filtered and analyzed, providers may or may not understand how to use genomic data to guide cancer care. This talk will review current research on providers’ attitudes about and understanding of large-scale genomic data and discuss possible innovations that aim to address knowledge gaps.
10:45 Precision Oncology Decision Support: Getting the Right Drug(s) to the Right Patient(s) at the Right Time(s)
Kenna R. Mills Shaw, Ph.D., Executive Director, Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Institute for Personal Cancer Therapy (IPCT)
This talk will review the complexities of implementing a precision oncology decision support system at a major cancer center and why such a system is necessary to ensure optimization of clinical utilization of genomic testing data, particularly for matching to clinical trials.
11:15 Use of Clinical Genome and Exome Sequencing in Patients with Suspected Heritable Disease
Jason Merker, M.D., Ph.D., Co-Director of the Stanford Medicine Clinical Genomics Service, Pathology, Stanford University School of Medicine
Genome and exome sequencing are being increasingly applied in clinical practice for the diagnosis of unexplained heritable disease. I will describe our experience establishing a clinical genomics service at an academic medical center that uses genomic sequencing to identify the molecular etiology in patients with unexplained pediatric syndromes, heritable cardiovascular disease, and heritable cancer predisposition. This will include discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of these methods, clinical workflow, and case examples.
11:45 Global Commercialization of Companion Diagnostics: Value Capture in Personalized Medicine
Joseph Ferrara, President, Boston Healthcare
Given rapid advances in diagnostic technology and significant changes in the global healthcare funding environment, how can pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies deliver the increased value and access demanded by providers, payers, and patients in personalized medicine? Key commercialization factors for Rx/Dx innovators will be highlighted.
12:15 pm Session Break
12:25 Luncheon Presentation I: Co-Developing Diagnostics and Therapeutics: Consideration and Case Studies
Dan Snyder, MBA, President & CEO, MolecularMD
12:55 KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: The Nuts and Bolts of the Precision Pathology Center
Michael H. A. Roehrl, M.D., Ph.D., Director, Precision Pathology Biobanking Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
We will discuss the central role of Precision Pathology in cutting-edge health care. We have built a new and comprehensive Center around five key pillars: (1) Precision Biobanking; (2) Precision Health Informatics; (3) New and Disruptive Diagnostic Technologies; (4) Pathology Hub for Precision Clinical Trials; and (5) R&D and Commercialization Partnerships with Biotech and Pharma. The talk will highlight the challenges and opportunities of Big Data acquisition, processing, and federation for research and improved patient management.
1:25 Refreshment Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing
2:00 Chairperson’s Remarks
J. Marty Tenenbaum, Ph.D., Founder & Chairman, Cancer Commons
In the era of molecular medicine, knowledge changes very rapidly and is highly dispersed. No single individual knows the optimal way to treat any complex case, nor even how to find out. Current trial designs (including modern “adaptive” designs) can’t efficiently search the huge space of (molecular subtypes) x (treatment combinations). In the absence of definitive trials, the best way to help current patients achieve better outcomes, is by mining and validating the insights, intuitions, and experience of our best clinicians. This panel will explore approaches to rapid capture, dissemination, and validation of clinically actionable knowledge.
Benefits and challenges of a precision oncology knowledge sharing network:
- What constitutes knowledge worth sharing?
- How can it be most easily located and captured?
- How can we get it to the right people at the right time?
- How can we validate and refine the knowledge based on clinical experiences?
- What steps can we take today to begin?
2:10 Knowledge Generation and Sharing: An Academic Cancer Center Perspective
Alan Ashworth, Ph.D., FRS, President, UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center; Senior Vice President for Cancer Services, UCSF Health Professor Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology, Medicine; E. Dixon Heise Distinguished Professor, Oncology, University of California, San Francisco
New technologies are driving the acquisition of large amounts of genomic and other complex data and this is increasingly being used to direct cancer therapy. However interpretation is challenging due to the heterogeneity of cancer. Sharing, aggregation and meta-analysis of this data is essential if the promise of precision medicine for cancer is to be realized. Opportunities and challenges in knowledge generation and sharing will be discussed.
2:30 Can a Professional Society Play a Role in Rapid Cancer Learning
Laurence J. Marton, M.D., Member, Board of Trustees, American Association for Cancer Research Foundation; Member, Board of Directors, Cancer Commons
Professional cancer societies have a membership drawn from students to professors, and from support group members to government and industry participants. A number of these societies are convening groups to collate and share omic and clinical data. Not yet a part of most cooperatives is the ability and imperative to share data, insights, and knowledge that might inform regarding relevant therapeutic interventions for patients who have reached the point of choices beyond the standard of care. The tools to do so are now being crafted and such activity is critical.
2:50 Medbook and Casebook: A Platform and Application for Collaboration between Bioinformatics Researchers and Clinicians
Ted Goldstein, Ph.D., University of California, Santa Cruz
3:10 Capturing, Analyzing, and Publishing Tumor Board Cases and Insights
Jeffrey Shrager, Ph.D., CTO, Cancer Commons; Adjunct Professor, Symbolic Systems Program, Stanford
Advanced tumor boards now regularly consider difficult cases, often considering molecular data. However, it can take years for the unique insights developed in these settings to reach additional patients. The CaseBook platform and process enables tumor boards to aggregate and share clinical insights, especially treatment hypotheses and reasoning, and to search and analyze these data to provide insights that might be relevant to treating new patients.
3:30 PANEL DISCUSSION
4:10 Hollywood Oscar Dessert Reception in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing
5:00 Breakout Discussions in the Exhibit Hall
These interactive discussion groups are open to all attendees, speakers, sponsors, & exhibitors. Participants choose a specific breakout discussion group to join. Each group has a moderator to ensure focused discussions around key issues within the topic. This format allows participants to meet potential collaborators, share examples from their work, vet ideas with peers, and be part of a group problem-solving endeavor. The discussions provide an informal exchange of ideas and are not meant to be a corporate or specific product discussion. Pre-registration to sign up for one of the topics will occur a week or two prior to the Event via the App.
Precision Medicine: A Discussion on Data-Sharing
Maynard V. Olson, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Medicine and Genome Sciences, University of Washington
- Is widespread sharing of Precision Medicine data possible?
- What would be the advantages and drawbacks of an Information Commons?
- What incentives would be required to facilitate development of an Information Commons?
Therapeutic Opportunities: From Bugs-As-Drugs to Small Molecule Targets
Lynn Bry, M.D., Ph.D., FCAP, Director, Massachusetts Host-Microbiome Center, Pathology, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
- Introduction to the microbiota and its role in health and disease
- Therapeutic uses of the microbiota
- Opportunities for specific diseases
- Small molecules vs living organisms (pre-biotics, etc.)
CRISP Up Your Deals: Navigating the New World of Precision Medicine Deal Making
Scott Palmer, Vice President, Life Sciences, Parthenon-EY
- The rise of “digital deals”
- How to think about structuring these deals
- What are the major challenges?
- How to measure success
6:00 Close of Day
Wednesday, February 22
7:00 am Registration Open
7:00 Breakfast Presentation (Sponsorship Opportunity Available) or Morning Coffee
8:00 Plenary Keynote Session
10:00 Refreshment Break and Poster Competition Winner Announced in the Exhibit Hall
10:50 Chairperson’s Remarks
Stephen F. Kingsmore, MB, ChB, BAO, DSc, FRCPath, President and CEO, Rady Pediatric Genomics & Systems Medicine Institute, Rady Children’s Hospital, San Diego
11:15 Genomic Sequencing of Healthy and Sick Newborns in the BabySeq Project
Joel Krier, M.D., MMSc, Clinical Chief, Division of Genetics; Director, Brigham Genomic Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Instructor, Harvard Medical School
The BabySeq Project is a proof-of-concept randomized control trial examining the implications of genomic newborn sequencing (gNBS) in two populations: a) sick or premature neonates admitted to the Boston Children’s Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) ICUs and b) generally healthy neonates from the BWH well nursery. This presentation will summarize the key progress and findings to date including study design, implementation, and preliminary results.
11:40 Ethical and Social Challenges Associated with Sequencing Newborns
Don Bailey, Ph.D., Distinguished Fellow, RTI International
Next-generation sequencing offers the promise of potentially useful health information but also evokes a number of ethical and social challenges. I describe a few of the major concerns, summarize what is known about each, and suggest strategies by which each could be mitigated.
12:05pm Exome Sequencing of Newborn Dried Blood Spots: Implications for Newborn Screening and for Exome Diagnostics
Aashish Adhikari, Ph.D., Postdoc, University of California, Berkeley
Public health newborn screening (NBS) identifies newborns with rare treatable conditions, permitting early intervention. The NBSeq project is evaluating the potential of whole exome sequencing in NBS using de-identified, archived dried blood spots (DBS) under an IRB-approved protocol with the California Department of Public Health. One aim explores feasibility of WES to replace or augment MS/MS for metabolic disorders. DBS of all California newborns from Jul 2005–Dec 2013 with disorders diagnosed by MS/MS and a selection of false positives were made available (1600 samples) and are being studied.
12:05 pm PANEL DISCUSSION
12:30 Session Break
12:40 Luncheon Presentation (Sponsorship Opportunity Available) or Enjoy Lunch on Your Own
1:10 Refreshment Break in the Exhibit Hall and Last Chance for Poster Viewing
1:50 Chairperson’s Remarks
Harry Glorikian, Healthcare Consultant
2:00 Real World Medicine and Real World Patients: Critical Understanding for Translational and Precision Medicine
Michael N. Liebman, Ph.D., Managing Director, IPQ Analytics, LLC, Professor, Drexel College of Medicine; Professor, Wenzhou First University Medical School
2:30 Establishing Guidelines for Use in Precision Medicine
Andrea Ferreira-Gonzalez, Ph.D., Professor and Chair, Division of Molecular Diagnostics; Director, Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory, Pathology, Virginia Commonwealth University
Next-generation DNA sequencing technology is revolutionizing precision medicine in genetics and cancer genomic diagnostics by enabling precision cancer medicine by directing molecularly targeted therapies. Adoption of NGS brings unprecedented challenges in incorporating this technology in the clinical setting. This presentation will provide a comprehensive overview on the key practice guidelines and good laboratory practices for implementation of clinical next-generation sequencing including assay development, validation, data management, analysis and interpretation of data in a CAP/CLIA environment.
3:00 Is the Idea of a Precision Medicine Information Commons Just a Utopian Dream?
Maynard V. Olson, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Medicine and Genome Sciences, University of Washington
All “Precision Medicine” initiatives will depend on data sets containing clinical and molecular information about enormous numbers of patients. Because current initiatives are building their own data resources with little coordination, future prospects of large-scale data-sharing are poor. The National Research Council’s Precision Medicine report makes a strong case for a pre-competitive Information Commons. Now is the time to ask whether this goal remains desirable and, if so, feasible.
3:30 Session Break
3:40 Chairperson’s Remarks
Andrew C. Fish, J.D., Executive Director, AdvaMedDx
3:45 Big Data – The Devil’s in the Details
Mike Barlow, Vice President, Operations, MolDX Executive Lead, Specialty Contracts, Palmetto GBA
Linking effective therapies and expanded trial designations are the expected benefit of the ever expanding capabilities of genomic biomarker and gene expression identification. More and more data is being generated every day. Keeping that data ‘valuable’ will require we maintain a critical focus on the quality and comparative values of the data, especially in the area of genomics and more specifically outcomes. Other questions will arise around where the data is collected, how it is curated, and who has access. As a Medicare payer, we support the concept of data collection/aggregation if that data can be effectively mined to create ever improving treatment protocols and more importantly improved outcomes.
http://www.biomax.com/
4:00 Efficiently Leveraging Commercial and Open Source Bioinformatics Tools for Clinical Interventions and Research Discoveries from Very Large Datasets
Ben Busby, Ph.D., Genomics Outreach Coordinator, NCBI, NLM/NIH
In precision medicine, it is often the case that efficacy does not depend on the appropriate computational intervention, but on the morphology of the data that informs the problem. For example, different strategies should be employed when calling short variants in stable versus unstable regions of the human genome, or when looking for pathogenic effectors in well-characterized versus newly discovered bacterial or viral pathogens. Pragmatic solutions from existing commercial and open source resources will be presented.
4:15 From Bits to Bedside: Developing a Learning Digital Health System to Evaluate Pigmented Skin Lesions
Dexter Hadley, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Pediatrics, Institute for Computational Health Sciences, University of California, San Francisco
Melanoma accounts for less than one percent of skin cancer cases but the vast majority of skin cancer deaths. Early screening and diagnosis significantly improves patient outcomes, yet no systematic framework exists for clinical evaluation of common pigmented lesions for risk of melanoma. In this talk, I will describe our approach to develop a learning health system focused on precision screening and diagnosis of skin cancer. We first leverage medical students in the clinics to capture digital samples of pigmented skin lesions at scale with mobile health technology. We then leverage this clinical big data to train state-of-the-art deep learning image classification algorithms to better screen for cancer. Our work translates routinely documented electronic health data into an impactful digital health initiative to directly improve clinical outcomes and advance clinical knowledge.
4:30 PANEL DISCUSSION
5:15 Close of Conference Program