Drs. Mark Ladanyi & Victor Velculescu to Keynote CHI’s Companion Diagnostics Conference in DC

NEEDHAM, Mass. - June 19, 2015 - PRLog -- Cambridge Healthtech institute (CHI) is pleased to announce the highly anticipated keynotes at its Sixth Annual Companion Diagnostics: Strategy & Partnerships conference set for August 18-19, 2015 at the Capital Hilton Hotel in Washington, DC.

Mark Ladanyi, M.D., of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, will talk about “The MSK-IMPACT Program: Analytical Validation and Clinical Experience with High Volume Clinical Next-Generation Sequencing to Enable Personalized Oncology,” on Tuesday, August 18 at 2:00-2:30 pm.

Dr. Ladanyi currently serves as the Chair, Molecular Biology at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. The research program in this laboratory focuses on the genomics and molecular pathogenesis of sarcomas and thoracic malignancies, with an emphasis on clinical translation of potential diagnostic markers and therapeutic targets. Dr. Ladanyi also co-directs (with Chris Sander) the Genome Data Analysis Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering, which is part of the TCGA project network.

Examples of recent contributions include the validation of DUSP4 as a driver gene for 8p losses in EGFR-mutant lung adenocarcinomas, the establishment of methods for enhanced detection of the EGFR T790M secondary mutation in the setting of acquired resistance to EGFR inhibitors, the discovery of BAP1 mutations in mesotheliomas with 3p losses, the identification of novel, recurrent HEY1-NCOA2 and KIF5B-RET fusions in mesenchymal chondrosarcoma and lung adenocarcinoma, respectively, both based on mining of exon-level expression data, as well as major involvement in the TCGA Network marker papers on the genomics of glioblastoma, ovarian carcinoma, and squamous lung cancer. Ongoing projects are addressing further questions in lung adenocarcinoma, mesothelioma, and several sarcoma types using whole exome and whole transcriptome sequencing, ChIP-seq, Sequenom mass spectrometry genotyping, NanoString expression profiling, RNAi screens, chemical screens, and proteomic approaches.

Then, Victor Velculescu, M.D., Ph.D., of Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center will discuss “Liquid Biopsies for Cancer Detection and Characterization” at 2:30-3:00 pm. He will share lessons learned through the characterization of cancer genome landscapes, challenges in translating these analyses to the clinic, and new technologies that have emerged to analyze molecular alterations in the circulation of cancer patients as cell-free tumor DNA. These approaches have important implications for non-invasive detection and monitoring of human cancer, therapeutic stratification, and identification of mechanisms of resistance to targeted therapies.

Dr. Velculescu is currently the Co-Director of Cancer Biology and Professor of Oncology and Pathology at the Johns Hopkins University Kimmel Cancer Center.  He is internationally known for his genomic discoveries in human cancer.  Dr. Velculescu developed SAGE (serial analysis of gene expression) and used this method to perform the first transcriptome analysis in eukaryotic cells.  Subsequently, he developed Digital Karyotyping for analysis of structural genomic alterations and together with his colleagues performed the first sequence analysis of the coding genome in human cancers, including breast, colorectal, brain, pancreatic, and ovarian cancers.  These analyses identified a variety of genes not previously known to be involved in neoplasia, including PIK3CA gene as one of the most highly mutated genes in human cancer.  More recently, his group has developed PARE (personalized analysis of rearranged ends) for non-invasive liquid biopsy approaches for tumor detection and monitoring.  These discoveries provide insights into the mechanistic features and pathways underlying human cancer and provide new opportunities for individualized diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.

Dr. Velculescu completed his B.S. at Stanford University and his M.D., Ph.D., and postdoctoral fellowship in Oncology at Johns Hopkins University.  Dr. Velculescu is a member of the Board of Directors of AACR, has served as a member of scientific advisory boards of Basser Research Center at University of Pennsylvania, the Starr Cancer Consortium, Quintiles, Helicos Biosciences, Inostics, and SoftGenetics, and is a co-founder of Personal Genome Diagnostics.  He is the recipient of several awards for his work including the Grand Prize Winner of the Amersham/Pharmacia & Science Young Scientist Prize (1999), Judson Daland Prize of the American Philosophical Society (2008), the European Association of Cancer Research and Carcinogenesis Young Investigator Award (2008), the AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cancer Research (2009), the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research (2011), and the AACR Team Science Awards for Pancreatic (2013) and Brain Cancer Research (2014).

Attendees will enjoy a robust educational program with four additional sessions, panels and roundtable discussions designed to facilitate knowledge and opinion exchange between pharmaceutical and diagnostics executives, translational scientists, clinicians, business experts, regulators, international companion diagnostics leaders, and other parties involved in drug-diagnostics co-development and precision medicine. Case studies of successful collaboration between pharmaceutical and diagnostics companies’ researchers and executives will be presented.

For further details, visit http://www.nextgenerationdx.com/companion-diagnostics.

About Next Generation Dx Summit
The Next Generation Dx Summit, entering its seventh year, brings together more than 800 diagnostics professionals from across the world, providing comprehensive programming and valuable networking opportunities. Spanning from clinical diagnostics to business strategy, this year’s expanded program encompasses predictive cancer biomarkers, companion diagnostics, infectious disease, point-of-care, pharmacy-based diagnostics, cell-free DNA, commercialization, cancer immunotherapy, and reimbursement. With widespread coverage of all the most relevant diagnostics topics, the Next Generation Dx Summit promises to be a must-attend event to hear the latest announcements and developments in this rapidly evolving field. http://www.nextgenerationdx.com

About Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI)
Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI), founded in 1992, is the industry leader in providing superior-quality scientific information to eminent researchers and business experts from top pharmaceutical, biotech, and academic organizations. Delivering an assortment of resources such as events, reports, publications and eNewsletters, CHI's portfolio of products include Cambridge Healthtech Institute Conferences, Barnett Educational Services, Insight Pharma Reports, Cambridge Marketing Consultants, Cambridge Meeting Planners, Cambridge Healthtech Media Group, The Knowledge Foundation, and OpenHelix. http://www.chicorporate.com