Hi Healthcare Professional,

We recently engaged in a discussion with Daphne Koller, CEO and founder of insitro and keynote speaker for the AI & Data Science Track at the PMWC 2024. The event is being held January 24-26, 2024 in Silicon Valley (FULL 6-TRACK PROGRAM SCHEDULE), and will explore opportunities and advancements that are emerging through the intersection of AI and data science.

As Koller shared in our conversation, we are currently witnessing an exponential trajectory in how data science and AI/ML can be applied to accelerate development cycle timelines across industries and the broad impact it is making on society. A notable instance is the recent launch of ChatGPT, which occurred only 10 months ago but is already evolving and influencing operations across various disciplines and professional domains. In alignment with this trend, AI and data science are projected to revolutionize every facet of drug discovery, clinical care and basic research.

“We find ourselves in a world where AI/ML can accomplish even more – advancing at such an accelerated pace and surpassing what would not have been achievable merely a month ago.”

Within healthcare, precision oncology stands out as one area with the swiftest advancement and subsequent deployment of AI/ML applications, Koller explained. Consider the case of breast cancer diagnosis – while early stages of AI/ML integration allowed for the identification of breast lumps, defining distinct cancer subtypes and understanding how to uniquely address them demanded the utilization of advanced data tools. As AI/ML has been further integrated into drug development and cancer diagnosis, we’ve come to understand the importance of treating certain cancers based on unique features. For example, we now know that HER-2 positive breast cancer patients should be treated differently than patients with BRCA1-based breast cancer. The data feeding into these decisions are already more intricate than what visual inspection by a human can encompass – an algorithm effectively handles this task by analyzing genetic data and translating it into recommended treatment choices.

Moving ahead, Koller believes the next generation of cancer treatments will involve subtle patterns in circulating DNA and methylation patterns, as well as integrating ML-enabled insights from histopathology, both requiring analysis beyond what a clinician can readily execute. Instead, a trained algorithm will be responsible for conducting the analysis. This shift will lead AI to play a more central role in making cancer predictions (e.g., cancer origin, driver mutations) and subsequent treatment determinations. Looking beyond cancer, other therapeutic areas will also reap benefits from advances in AI and data science.

“One imperative to drive field progress involves the collection of abundant high-content patient data, secure placement within anonymized research environments, and controlled researcher access within an appropriate data security framework. This will enable the unraveling of human disease heterogeneity and identification of treatable patient groups. This is increasingly pivotal, given that many conditions currently classified as diseases are highly likely not singular entities. Alzheimer’s, for example, isn’t a single disease, neither is autism or any condition in the mental health spectrum.”

“While we have seen these tremendous advances, our healthcare system is not fully armed with the tools necessary to deliver on the promise of what this technology can do. There continues to be inadequate system-wide patient data collection, and when sufficient data is able to be amassed, it often remains locked in data silos accessible to a handful of principal investigators involved in research.”

Koller emphasized that this approach doesn’t offer a winning strategy for our industry as a whole – or, more importantly, for patients. “Initiatives that have transcended these barriers, like the UK Biobank or The Cancer Genome Atlas, have profoundly reshaped the medical discipline. We should strive for more initiatives of this kind in order to truly unlock the potential of AI/ML for the benefit of patients – an effort so many of us in this industry have committed our lives and careers to.”

We are thrilled to present an outstanding data science track for PMWC 2024 Silicon Valley, scheduled for January 24-26, see the agenda for where Daphne is giving a keynote (Track 2 – January 26th):

Track Chair: Gad Getz, Broad Institute

• PMWC 2024 Luminary Award
Luminary Honoree: Heidi Rehm, MGH and Broad Institute
• Opening Talk: The Power of Data by Track Chair Gaddy Getz, Broad Institute
• Global Data Sharing Collaboration: Overcoming Organizational and Sectoral Barriers (PANEL)
Chair: Gad Getz, Broad Institute
– Peter Goodhand, GA4GH
– Valentina Di Francesco, NHGRI
• Challenges of Remote Data Harmonization and Querying
Chair: Heidi Rhem, MGH and Broad Institute
– Andrea Ramirez, All of Us
– Ida Sim, UCSF
– Josh Peterson, Emerge/Vanderbilt University Medical Center
– Nara Sobreira, Johns Hopkins/GeneMatcher
• Keynote: Machine Learning for Therapeutic Discovery
– Daphne Koller, insitro
• Exploring the Power of AI and Data Sciences in Drug Discovery
Chair: Russ Altman, Stanford University
– Kim Branson, GSK
– Sun-Gou Ji, BridgeBio
– Angela Oliveira Pisco, Insitro
• Foundation Models to Advance Precision Medicine (PANEL)
Chair: Nigam Shah, Stanford
– Aashima Gupta, Google
– Matthew Lungren, Microsoft
– Rod Tarrago, AWS

We invite you to join key opinion leaders in the field, ensuring you don’t miss out on these crucial discussions that are poised to shape decision-making across all healthcare and medical facets. Precision medicine, with its focus on granular comprehension and targeted treatment at both the patient population and individual patient levels, stands on the brink of significant advances facilitated by these emerging, increasingly potent AI systems and capabilities.

Join us January 24-26 (Link by Thursday) to participate in this critical discourse and witness the profound transformation in progress.

Sincerely,

Tal Behar

President & Co-founder, PMWC
PMWC 2024 Silicon Valley – January 24-26, 2024

The Precision Medicine World Conference (PMWC)

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Although the health of women has generally seen some improvements over the years, it is still insufficiently supported when it comes to clinical study representation in funding research and in drug development. Women’s health as a medical specialty should include a comprehensive slate of physical, mental, and social well-being and not just focus narrowly on the absence of disease. To achieve this, sex differences should be considered. Sex differences contribute to health conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), endometriosis, menopause (with all its side-effects), as well as higher prevalence of certain diseases (e.g., autoimmune diseases, long Covid-19, heart disease, and mental illnesses), all of which affect prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and overall health outcomes.

Women are underrepresented in clinical trials, even though it is well-known that drugs are metabolized differently in women and men. It is encouraging to see that the NIH has now an office fully dedicated to research women’s health trying to ensure that roughly half of all participants in NIH-funded trials are women.
Funding of research for women is not aligned with burdens of disease – in fact funding for women’s health research is undervalued and understudied.

Janine Austin Clayton, NIH and PMWC January 24-26, 2024 Luminary Awardee: “Sex is an important biological variable that needs to be rigorously accounted for in the biomedical continuum from the laboratory to the clinic. … We can do an even better job of addressing complex public health problems by looking at male and female differences and by studying both sexes in the lab, the clinic, and when delivering care.”

We are at an incredibly exciting time with the intersection of data, technology, and healthcare which should allow us to focus on the health of women more intensely from an interdisciplinary angle to make true advances. Researching women’s health as a distinct discipline allows for a deeper understanding of unique aspects of women’s experiences and physiology. For this exact reason, PMWC 2024 Silicon Valley will have a track fully dedicated to women’s health.

See the Just-Released Full PMWC January 24-26, 2024 Silicon Valley PROGRAM here.

We’re proud to present the lineup of key leaders contributing to the Women’s Health Track (Track 3), which is co-chaired by Yoel Sadovsky (Magee Women’s Research Institute) and Noel Bairey Merz (Barbara Streisand Women’s Heart Center, Cedars Sinai Medical Center):

Pioneer Award Honoree: David Page (MIT) will be honored for his groundbreaking discoveries in sex chromosome biology, including the unique properties of the Y chromosome and the genetic basis of sex differences in health and reproductive traits.
Luminary Award Honoree: Janine Austin Clayton (NIH) will be honored for her influential work to advance women’s health through the promotion of research inclusion and the study of sex differences.
o Keynote: David Page (MIT) keynote: The Chromosomal Basis of Sex Differences in Health and Disease
o Keynote: Janine Austin Clayton (NIH): Enhancing Women’s Health Research
General Sex Differences in Large Studies
o Karen Reue (UCLA) will focus on Sex Differences in Metabolic Disease and how the prevalence and presentation of cardiometabolic diseases is sex-biased
o Franck Mauvis-Jarvis (Tulane University) will discuss Sex Differences in Insulin Resistance
Feto-placental Sex Differences – chaired by Yoel Sadovsky (University of Pittsburgh)
o Nima Aghaeepour (Stanford University) will dive into AI Taxonomy for Reproductive Health
o Leslie Myatt (OHSU Oregon) will discuss Fetal Sex and Pregnancy Outcomes
Systems and Sex Differences
o Marcia Stefanick (Stanford University) will talk about Sex differences in Cancer
o Sabra Klein (JHU) will present on Sex Differences in Immunity to Viruses
o Judy Regensteiner (University of Colorado) will discuss Sex and Gender with a Focus on Diabetes
Cardiovascular Sex Differences – chaired by Noel Bairey Merz (Cedars Sinai Medical Center)
Sex Differences in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD)
o Marina Sirota (UCSF) will dive into Sex Differences in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) Using Clinical, Molecular, and Computational Approaches
o Sarah Banks (UCSD) will discuss Sex Differences in Tau Pathology and AD Risk
o Roberta Brinton (University of Arizona) will present Hormone Therapy and Implications for Alzheimer’s Disease
Sex Differences and Cognitive-behavioral Function
o Debra Kaysen (Stanford University) will focus on Gender Effects on Trauma Exposure, PTSD, and Treatment
o Larry Cahill (UCI) will discuss Sex Influences on the Brain

Please join us and participate in this truly important matter at PMWC Silicon Valley, January 24-26, 2024. Register today to secure your spot.

I hope to see you join this important discussion and help drive positive change in this critical area of human health.

Sincerely,

Tal Behar

President & Co-founder, PMWC
PMWC 2024 Silicon Valley – January 24-26, 2024

The Precision Medicine World Conference (PMWC)

The lack of specific guidelines on how to adjust medications based on genetic test results, and the difficulty in translating genetic test results into actionable prescribing decisions for affected drugs are the main reasons for the slow adoption of pharmacogenomic testing in the clinical setting.

The Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium (CPIC), an international consortium dedicated to facilitating the use of pharmacogenomic testing in patient care, has as a goal to address these clinical implementation barriers by creating, curating, and posting freely available, peer-reviewed, evidence-based, updatable, and detailed gene/drug clinical practice guidelines. CPIC guidelines are designed to provide all information needed to interpret a pharmacogenomic test result, from defining haplotypes/alleles (e.g., CYP2D6*1/*5) to translating to a clinical phenotype (e.g., CYP2D6 intermediate metabolizer) and determining how to alter drug prescribing based on the phenotype assignment.

Kelly Caudle, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Co-PI/Director CPIC, and Pharmacogenomics (PGx) Track Chair at PMWC January 24-26, 2024 Silicon Valley: “The lack of standardization in pharmacogenomic testing and reporting leads to issues with interoperability and portability of results, resulting in increased workload and cost for implementation and need for extensive training of clinicians. Furthermore, the lack of standardization can be misleading and confusing to many clinicians, resulting in distrust and misinterpretation of results.”

Even though, the CPIC guidelines and projects have been endorsed by several professional societies, including the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP), many testing laboratories are not aware of those guidelines. In fact, many different labs are using different reporting guidelines, disconnected from CPIC guidelines which results in discordance. To change this path, work is underway to create Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that will help the use of standardized genotype-phenotype relationships in order to create clear recommendations for clinical decision making by healthcare professionals, patients, and other stakeholders.

Kelly Caudle: “Ultimately, clinical practice and patient care would be improved if more efficient exchange of information between laboratories and EHR systems would be allowed. Consistent interpretation of genetic information, efficient clinical training and competencies and consistent reimbursement policies are also needed.”

We urge you to forward this email to any individuals or organizations involved in PGx testing who would benefit from standardizing their genotype-phenotype relationships and implementing the CPIC guidelines for improved patient care.

This important and pertinent precision medicine topic includes the following talks in PMWC 2024 PGx track chaired by Kelly Caudle, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (See Developing Program), and with thought leaders in the field:

• PMWC 2024 PGx Award Ceremony:
Pioneer Honoree: Russ Altman, Stanford
Pioneer Honoree: Andrea Gaedigk, University of Kansas
Luminary Honoree: Teri E. Klein, Stanford
• Standardization: Key to Advancing Precision Medicine
Opening Talk: Kelly E. Caudle, St. Jude
• Current and Desired States of Standardization of Clinical Laboratory Processes
Chair: Andrea Gaedigk, University of Kansas
– Vicky Pratt, Agena Bioscience
• FIRESIDE CHAT
Chair: Damon Hostin, Illumina
– Howard McLeod, Intermountain Health
• Current and Desired States of Standardization of Reporting
Chair: Chad Bousman, University of Calgary
– Vicky Pratt, Agena Bioscience
– Lisa Brown
– Susanne Haga, Duke
• Current and Desired States of Standardization of Pharmacogenomic Test Ordering and Reimbursement (PANEL)
Chair: Sara Rogers, American Society of Pharmacovigilance
– Jai Patel, Atrium Health
– Greg Warren, Axene Health Partners
• Current and Desired State of PGx Education
Chair: Phil Empey, University of Pittsburgh
– Teri E. Klein, Stanford
• Current and Desired State of the Patient Experience in Precision Medicine
Chair: Avni Santani, LetsGetChecked
• Clinical Pearls and Outcome Data: Advancing the Adoption of Pharmacogenomics in Clinical Practice
Chair: Kelly E. Caudle, St. Jude
– Larisa H Cavallari, University of Florida
– Jeff Bishop, University of Minnesota

Secure your spot and participate in the discussion about the future of PGx and beyond by registering now for PMWC Silicon Valley, January 24-26, 2024.
Note there are various ticket types available and group discounts.

Sincerely,

Tal Behar