Personalized Medicine: A Search for Tailored Therapeutics

Organizers

Ann del Campo, MS, PhD

Sequenom, Inc.
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Ann del Campo received her BS degree in biology and chemistry from St. Joseph College in West Hartford, CT, in 1977 and completed her MS and PhD degree in experimental pathology from the University of Southern California LAC-USC Medical Campus in 1984. Following work at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills, CA, she joined industry and was quickly recognized as an "ambassador" to work with other company representatives in industry who needed technical expertise and marketable presentations. In 1989, she joined Amersham Life Sciences and then GE Healthcare for an 18-year tenure bringing new technologies to market, including proteomics, high-throughput screening, custom preparations for ADME, and live cell imaging technologies within pharmaceutical companies and academic centers of excellence. During this time she received numerous awards for excellence in industry. Del Campo is currently a senior business development manager at Sequenom, Inc., and works with well-recognized scientists in translational sciences and biomarker validation studies to enable more tailored health care treatments for patients in oncology and other diseases where genomic signatures can enable improved outcomes. She has served as a member of the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening's Education Advisory Committee and is working in her local community to promote student mentorship programs with local schools to engage students and their families in healthier lifestyles by connecting them to local farms.

Charles A. Lunn, PhD

Merck Research Laboratories
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Charles A. Lunn received his BA and PhD degrees from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, in 1985. Following postdoctoral training at SUNY Stony Brook, he joined Schering-Plough's Department of Immunology, with a focus on novel immune modulators. He joined the New Lead Discovery group at Schering-Plough in 2004 and retained this position when Schering-Plough and Merck merged in 2009. Lunn's 50 publications include editing the book Membrane Proteins as Drug Targets, part of Elsevier's Progress in Molecular Biology and Translational Science series. He is currently a research fellow with the department of In Vitro Pharmacology at Merck Research Laboratories in Kenilworth, NJ. Lunn is also program coordinator for the Biochemical Pharmacology Steering Committee at the New York Academy of Sciences and a member of the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening's Education Advisory Committee.

Jennifer Henry, PhD

The New York Academy of Sciences
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Jennifer Henry received her PhD in plant molecular biology from the University of Melbourne, Australia, with Paul Taylor at the University of Melbourne and Phil Larkin at CSIRO Plant Industry in Canberra, specializing in the genetic engineering of transgenic crops. She was then appointed as Associate Editor, then Editor, of Functional Plant Biology at CSIRO Publishing. She moved to New York for her appointment as a Publishing Manager in the Academic Journals division at Nature Publishing Group, where she was responsible for the publication of biomedical journals in nephrology, clinical pharmacology, hypertension, dermatology, and oncology.Henry joined the Academy in 2009 as Director of Life Sciences and organizes 35–40 seminars each year. She is responsible for developing scientific content in coordination with the various life sciences Discussion Group steering committees, under the auspices of the Academy's Frontiers of Science program. She also generates alliances with outside organizations interested in the programmatic content.

Speakers

Charles R. Cantor, PhD

Sequenom Inc.
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Charles Cantor is a founder and Chief Scientific Officer at SEQUENOM, Inc., a genetics discovery company with tools, information, and strategies for determining the medical impact of genes and genetic variations. He is also founder of SelectX Pharmaceuticals, a drug discovery company; Retrotope, an anti-aging company; and Dithera, a biotherapeutic company. Cantor is professor emeritus in biomedical engineering and pharmacology and was the director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology at Boston University. He is adjunct professor of bioengineering at the University of California San Diego, adjunct professor of molecular biology at the Scripps Institute for Research, and distinguished adjunct professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of California Irvine. Prior to this, Cantor held positions at Columbia University and the University of California at Berkeley. He was also the director of the Human Genome Center Project of the Department of Energy at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Cantor has been granted 60 U.S. patents and wrote a three-volume textbook on biophysical chemistry. He coauthored the first textbook on genomics, titled The Science and Technology of the Human Genome Project. In addition, he sits on the advisory boards of more than 15 national and international biotechnology firms, has published more than 450 peer-reviewed articles, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Mark R. Chance, PhD

Case Western Reserve University
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Mark Chance is professor of general medical sciences, Director of the Center for Proteomics and Bioinformatics, and professor and interim chair of the Department of Genetics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Chance received his PhD in biophysics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986. He spent a large portion of his career teaching at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine prior to joining the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the Center for Proteomics and Bioinformatics in 2005. The Chance lab uses quantitative mass spectrometry and 2-D gel techniques in order to identify biomarkers and regulatory pathways in complex diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and HIV infection. A major emphasis is placed on applying state-of-the art proteomics and systems biology tools to investigate HIV pathogenesis in the context of drug abuse, and provide significant biomarkers of cancer progression and response to therapy. The use of high-resolution mass spectrometry instruments of the Center, coupled with the advanced bioinformatics and biostatistical pipelines for analysis, provide quantitative label free protein expression analysis using a "shotgun" proteomics approach. Subsequent analysis using network and pathway tools provide novel insights into patho-physiological changes in disease. Chance has received numerous awards, including the Upjohn Company New Faculty Research Award and the Irma T. Hirschl Career Scientist Award. He has also published over 200 manuscripts on his proteomics, mass spectrometry, and bioinformatics research.

Randy L. Jirtle, PhD

Duke University Medical Center
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Randy L. Jirtle is a professor of radiation oncology and an associate professor of pathology at Duke University, Durham, NC, where he has been a faculty member since 1977. He graduated with a BS degree in nuclear engineering in 1970 and a PhD degree in radiation biology in 1976, both from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jirtle's research interests are in epigenetics, genomic imprinting, and the fetal origins of disease susceptibility. Jirtle holds two U.S. patents on imprinted genes, and another one is pending approval. He has published over 170 peer-reviewed articles, including 10 publications featured on journal covers. He was also a featured scientist on the NOVA and ScienceNow television programs on epigenetics and on National Public Radio programs The People's Pharmacy, The DNA Files, SQ Radio, and The Leonard Lopate Show: Please Explain. He has delivered numerous endowed lectures and was invited to present his research at the 2004 Nobel Symposium on Epigenetics. He was honored in 2006 with the Distinguished Achievement Award from the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 2007 Jirtle received an Esther B. O'Keeffe Charitable Foundation Award and capped off the year with a nomination for Time Magazine's Person of the Year. He was the inaugural recipient of the Epigenetic Medicine Award in 2008 and received the STARS Lecture Award in Nutrition and Cancer from the National Cancer Institute in 2009. In 2010 he was invited to participate in the launch meeting of the International Human Epigenome Consortium (IHEC) in Paris, the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado, and Nestlé's Seventh International Nutrition Symposium in Switzerland. Jirtle was invited this year to speak at the Epigenomics in Clinical Medicine Symposium sponsored by The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.

Marc Ladanyi, MD

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
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Marc Ladanyi received his MD from McGill University in Montreal and is presently Attending Pathologist in Molecular Diagnostics Service of the Department of Pathology and a member in the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York. In 2004, as head of the clinical molecular diagnostic laboratories at MSKCC, Ladanyi established rapid and sensitive EGFR mutation detection assays that allowed early implementation of tumor mutation testing, making the discovery of EGFR mutations in lung cancer immediately relevant to the routine care of lung cancer patients. Beyond EGFR mutation testing, Ladanyi has also been a leader in recent efforts to introduce into routine practice even broader large-scale screening of lung cancer tumor specimens for additional mutations that can be targets for new drugs. His research laboratory is focused on the genomics and molecular pathogenesis of sarcomas and thoracic malignancies, including lung adenocarcinomas and mesothelioma. Ladanyi has received the Young Investigator Award from the U.S. and Canadian Academy of Pathology (2005) and was awarded the Nina Axelrod Lectureship by the Connective Tissue Oncology Society (2007) and the Caine Halter Hope Now Award from Uniting Against Lung Cancer (2009). In 2010 he was also appointed to the William Ruane Chair in Molecular Oncology at MSKCC. He has authored or coauthored over 200 primary research papers and over 40 reviews and commentaries.

Abbas Abdollahi, PhD

Abbas Abdollahi studied cancer genetics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Fox Chase Cancer Center, where he discovered and characterized novel genes. He also held faculty positions at Drexel University and California State University in the areas of biochemistry and nutrition. He has worked as Scientific Review Officer at the Health Group Division of SRA International, Inc. and as Contributing Editor for BioTechniques. Abbas Abdollahi holds a PhD in Environmental Toxicology from Drexel University.