GENOMICS IN PRECISION ONCOLOGY XCHANGE
EAST COAST
Boston
April 5, 2023

Welcome to hubXchange’s East Coast Genomics in Precision Oncology 2023, bringing together executives from pharma and biotech to address and find solutions to the key issues faced in genomics-led oncology precision medicine strategies.

Discussion topics will cover Cancer Genomics, Translational Bioinformatics, Data Quality & Access and Genomics Informed Clinical Decisions.

Take advantage of this unique highly interactive meeting format designed for maximum engagement, collaboration and networking with your peers.

Venue Details: Hilton Boston Woburn Hotel, 2 Forbes Road, Woburn MA 01801

SNAPSHOTS OF DISCUSSION TOPICS

  • How to design drug combinations with Immuno-oncology treatment
  • The state of progress of precision medicine in immuno-oncology
  • ctDNA for cancer monitoring and MRD
  • The path from raw data to enabling biomarkers in translational research: challenges and opportunities
  • Translating genomics into decisions
  • Data quality & access to single cell data: How can we do better? A pharmaceutical perspective and siscussion
  • Opportunities and challenges in leveraging real-world data to support patient care inprecision oncology
  • Utilizing local genomic testing for precision trial enrollment
  • Clinical trial design & its use in silico modelling for combination therapies and analyzing clinical trial designs
  • How can new multiomics technologies be incorporated into the clinic?
  • Functional integration of genomic markers in clinical research

Full Xchange Agenda

Click on each track for detailed agenda

Cancer Genomics

Time
Titles and Bullets
Facilitator
08:00 – 08:30
Registration 
08:30 – 09:00

Opening Address & Keynote Presentation
The Advantages of Incorporating Patient Heterogeneity During Preclinical Stages

 

Chief Business Officer, Predictive Oncology

Pamela A. Bush, Ph.D., has over 20 years of experience in venture creation, finance and business development in the life sciences industry. Dr. Bush is the Senior Vice President of Strategic Sales and Business Development at Predictive Oncology (POAI) where she leads activities across the portfolio. Prior to joining POAI, Dr. Bush worked at Eli Lilly & Company in various functions including corporate business development, finance and patient services. In addition, she has worked in business consulting and economic development supporting the creation and growth of 80+ life sciences start-ups.  Dr. Bush holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and an MBA from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University.  

Pamela Bush
09:05 – 10:05

How to design drug combinations with Immuno-oncology treatment

  • How to identify resistance mechanisms to I/O therapy from a data, experimental and algorithmic perspective ?
  • How to potentiate existing I/O therapy ? Which experimental models can help us find a combination therapy ?

  • Promise of multi omics in I/O drug discovery. Why do we need multi omics and how to analyze the data ?

  • What are the current challenges in I/O drug discovery and what data, experiments and computational tools can help address them ?

Senior Scientist, Sanofi

With a dual background in pharmaceutical sciences and cancer bioinformatics, Mi Yang uses machine learning to elucidate disease mechanisms, with the ultimate goal of new drug discovery and combination. Mi was initially trained as a pharmacist at the University of Paris-Sud. Then as a PhD student at Heidelberg University, he developed computational methods for drug synergy prediction and mechanistic exploration from large scale cancer drug screening datasets. At Stanford, he built a computational framework for drug discovery in immuno-oncology. At PrognomIQ, he worked on multi-omics cancer early detection from liquid biopsy. Mi is currently working as a senior scientist in oncology bioinformatics at Sanofi.

Mike Yang
10:10 – 10:40
1-2-1 Meetings/Networking Break
10:40 – 11:10
1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break
11:10 – 11:20
Morning Refreshments
11:20 – 12:20

Boosting the IO within bIOmarker analysis and precision medicine: The NeXT generation of comprehensive molecular characterization of tissue and liquid biopsy

  • Rapid advances in Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies have revolutionized progress in personalized cancer vaccines, precision medicine and biomarker discovery and MRD detection.
  • Despite many advancements there are still challenges that must be addressed for both tissue profiling and liquid biopsy approaches.
  • This roundtable discussion will review various prevailing issues and strategies facing the field.

Field Application Scientist, Personalis

12:20 – 13:20
Networking Lunch
13:20 – 13:50

Spotlight Presentation
Elucidation of the Cellular and Molecular Features of the TME Underlying Immune Escape and IO Failure

Poor patient responses to immunotherapy and IO clinical trial failure can be influenced by multiple molecular and cellular factors, such as tumor mutational burden, immune infiltration, and active immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment (TME). Although the involvement of these factors is known to impact patient responses, they are often not considered in IO clinical trial enrollment and therapeutic decision-making. To address this gap, BostonGene provides a comprehensive profile or portrait of a patient’s disease for therapy selection and stratification for IO clinical trials to improve outcomes by using CLIA-certified advanced whole exome and whole transcriptome sequencing paired with best-in-class analytics.

Vice President of Product Development, BostonGene 

Since joining BostonGene in 2016, Dr. Alexander Bagaev has been instrumental in the company’s growth through product and business initiatives. He joined BostonGene as a cancer immunology specialist and has provided strategic direction for the company’s vision and product development. As Vice President of Product Development at BostonGene, he manages the product roadmap and product teams while leading the Research & Development Bioinformatic teams. Dr. Bagaev has over 12 years of experience and extensive training in molecular biology, oncology and immunology. Before joining BostonGene, Dr. Bagaev worked on multiple projects associated with novel vaccine development, studying myeloid tumor microenvironment and testing novel immunomodulatory therapeutics. In addition, Dr. Bagaev was involved in projects of mathematical modeling of molecular pathways and cancer evolution. Dr. Bagaev holds PhD in immunology. Dr. Bagaev has published over 20 articles in leading peer-review journals and received more than 50 US and International patents.

Aleksander Bagaev
13:55 – 14:25
1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break
14:25 – 14:55
1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break
15:35 – 16:35

The state of progress of precision medicine in immuno-oncology

  • With more than 70 immunotherapy drugs in the clinical pipeline, how are we balancing our understanding of the tumor specific immune landscape and the feasibility of trying to address all our questions clinically?
  • What are the features of the successful patient enrichment biomarkers in immune oncology and what can we learn from them?
  • Beyond a mouse! How do we develop better model systems to reflect the complexity of the human immune system and cancer?
  • What is the role of the ‘surrogate biomarker’ that we could consider adopting in immune therapy
  • How do we consider the ‘immune therapy combination’ and the need to establish biomarkers in drug development

Chief Scientific Officer, Corbus Pharmaceuticals

A molecular and cellular biologist by training, Rachael is a deeply experienced drug developer that has been employed by various bio/pharma organizations including Amgen, Millennium/Takeda, and most recently Corbus Pharmaceuticals, where she currently serves as the Chief Scientific Officer. There Rachael is focused on attempting to wrangle the cytokine TGFb a known immunosuppressive growth factor in many cancers. Rachael’s 20+ years of drug development experience has been focused on advancing therapeutic programs across various mechanisms of action and modalities in immunology /oncology. Rachael brings significant pharmaceutical research and development experience, having focused on translating basic research concepts into effective clinical development strategies for many years. Previously at Takeda Rachael led the US Medical Affairs organization in Oncology, and also led the late-stage clinical development portfolio for solid tumors, where she successfully led the teams responsible for the front line approval of ALUNBRIG and established development strategies for programs like mobocertinib and sapanistertib. Rachael is an Australian, but currently resides in Boston, MA. She completed her BSc at the Australian National University and her PhD at the University of Western Australia /Institute for Child Health Research in Perth, WA.

Rachael Brake
16:35 – 16:45
Afternoon Refreshments

16:45 – 17:45

ctDNA for cancer monitoring and MRD

  • Limited predictive markers exist for PD1/PDL1 inhibitors- can we improve measurements?
  • How can we define novel biomarkers for PD1/PDL1 inhibitors?
  • How can we identify predictive biomarkers for novel IO agents?

Vice President, Translational Science, Oncology, AstraZeneca

Dr. J. Carl Barrett is Vice President & Global Head of Translational Medicine Oncology R&D at AstraZeneca. He is responsible for development and execution of biomarker strategies and translational sciences efforts to support compound development from research through early and full development in oncology.

Previously, Dr. Barrett was the founding Director of the NCI Center for Cancer Research (CCR), the NCI intramural center for translation medicine. He was also Scientific Director at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences where he focused on integrating new approaches to toxicogenomics, molecular toxicology, and the Environmental Genome Project.

J.Carl Barrett
17:45 – 18:45
Evening Drinks Reception

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Genomics in Precision Oncology | East Coast 2023
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