Report

This inaugural Personalized Medicine conference covered topics such as biomarkers and companion diagnostics, big data, next generation sequencing, gene editing, cancer immunotherapy and ethics. A diverse group of scientists, physicians and physician-scientists from academia and industry attended and participated in oral and poster presentations and lively panel discussions.

Day 1 focused on biomarkers, with an opening presentation from Dr. Ron Mazumder of Johnson and Johnson who gave an industry perspective on developing companion diagnostics for targeted therapies. Dr. Shyamala Maheswaran from the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center then discussed how circulating tumor cells can be used to understand patients’ disease progression and to gain insights into metastasis. Dr. Lynn Wang of The University of Chicago then presented data on resistance mutations arising after treatment with ibrutinib. Professor Michael Heller of The University of California at San Diego presented a technology to characterize cell free biomarkers. Dr. Minoli Perera of The University of Chicago presented data on warfarin pharmacogenomics in minority populations. Dr. Kojo Elenitoba-Johnson of The University of Pennsylvania discussed challenges and progress in the implementation of next generation sequencing in a large academic medical center. Dr. Erdam Bangi of The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai discussed the use of flies to understand pathway biology. Dr. Megan Lim of The University of Pennsylvania discussed various molecular markers she is investigating in lymphoma targeted therapies. Dr. Rong Fan of Yale University presented an exciting new multiplex technology to study cytokines in immunity and hematopoietic malignancy. The last speaker of the day was  Daryl Pritchard who discussed challenges facing the implementation of personalized medicine from a policy and regulatory perspective.

Day 2 focused on personalized medicine in areas other than oncology, evolutionary biology and ethics. Dr. Daniel Rader of The University of Pennsylvania discussed the use of personalized medicine in prevention of cardiovascular disease. Dr. Gerard Schellenberg of The University of Pennsylvania discussed personalized medicine in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological disorders. Dr. Seth Crosby of Washington University presented data on new molecular tools in the search for rare alleles. Dr. Paul Billings discussed broad perspectives in implementation of precision medicine. Dr. David Whitcomb of The University of Pittsburgh discussed the use of personalized medicine in gastrointestinal disorders. Dr. Carlo Maley of Arizona State University discussed evolutionary paths in cancer and implications for personalized medicine. Dr. Athena Aktipis of Arizona State University discussed multicellular organisms and implications for cancer evolution. These discussions were followed by a session on ethics. Dr. Jessica Mosersky of The University of Pennsylvania discussed ethical considerations in fetus characterization. Dr. Dena Davis of Lehigh University gave a compelling and emotional talk on suicide in patients with dementia. Dr. Bob Cook Deegan of Duke University discussed data access in the new digital age. Lastly, Jennifer Wagner discussed disruptive concepts from the perspective of a large health care system.

Day 3 focused on data analysis, next generation sequencing, gene editing and cancer immunotherapy. Dr. Gunaretnam Rajagopal from Johnson and Johnson discussed challenges and progress in analyzing big data. Dr. Peter Nagy of Columbia University discussed optimizing exome sequencing data analysis. Dr. Rong Chen of The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai discussed big data and identification of driver mutations. Dr. James Broach of The Penn State College of Medicine presented genomic analyses in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Dr. Mira Marcus-Kalish of Tel Aviv University discussed her work in data analysis of small and large datasets. Dr. Gary Schroth of Illumina discussed RNA sequencing methodologies for formalin fixed paraffin embedded samples in cancer and gave a nice overview of next generation sequencing. Dr. Ilan Kirsch discussed the use of sequencing of T cell receptors to guide therapeutic regimens. Dr. David Roth of The University of Pennsylvania discussed progress and challenges over the last three years in setting up a clinical diagnostic sequencing service at a large patient-oriented institution. Dr. Matthew Porteus of Stanford University discussed progress and challenges in genome editing for therapeutic purposes. Lastly, Dr. Bruce Levin of The University of Pennsylvania gave an inspirational talk on the benefits of immunotherapy for difficult to treat cancers.

All of the meeting participants were highly engaged and had numerous active discussions during and after the sessions. Positive feedback was also given on the high quality posters that were presented throughout the meeting. Several potential collaboration discussions and follow up meetings were scheduled amongst the participants. This conference was and will continue to be a fantastic networking and knowledge gathering forum for personalized medicine researchers.

Johnson and Johnson was a Diamond sponsor of the event while The University of Pennsylvania and Foundation Medicine were each Silver sponsors. The Personalized Medicine Coalition, The Journal of Personalized Medicine, BMC Medicine, and Applied and Translational Genomics were media partners.

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Silver

Media Partners

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