GENOMICS IN PRECISION ONCOLOGY XCHANGE
WEST COAST
San Francisco
February 8, 2023
Welcome to hubXchange’s West 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 – DoubleTree by Hilton San Francisco Airport Hotel, 835 Airport Boulevard, Burlingame CA 94010-9949
SNAPSHOTS OF DISCUSSION TOPICS
- Are all oncogenic drivers already known? How can we identify ‘novel’ targets with current genomics platforms?
- Next-gen technologies for scalable genetic manipulation and screening
- Liquid-biopsy and tissue-biopsy for personalized cancer genomics
- Advances in single cell methods to understand tumor biology
- Development of robust methodologies for tumor immune phenotyping in solid tumors
- Biomarker discovery and validation: From Mouse to Human, or Human to Mouse?
- Bioinformatic and computational strategies for creating knowledge
- Reusability of data analysis for decision makers
- Analysing clinical trial design and patient enrollment
- Clinical genomic real world data informed clinical decision: where are we now?
Full Xchange Agenda
Click on each track for detailed agenda
Cancer Genomics
Opening Address & Keynote Presentation
Automated NGS library preparation and workflows at scale with suboptimal samples
- FFPE Challenges and Solutions
- Automation over a wide range of input scenarios
Senior Bioinformatics Scientist, Tecan
Michael is a senior bioinformatician at Tecan and adjunct faculty at UCLA where he regularly teaches NGS-oriented bioinformatics workshops. He has experience both in on the wet- and dry-lab sides with significant experience in cancer genomics and immunology as well as metagenomics, CRISPR design and safety, medical genetics, and public health.
Are all oncogenic drivers already known? How can we identify ‘novel’ targets with current genomics platforms?
- Many “undruggable” driver genomic variants are known. What new approaches can we employ to target these patients?
- Are there new genomics assays that significantly deepen our understanding of oncogenicity/tumor suppression beyond variants and expression profiling?
- What in silico tools are being used to understand the functional impact of variants?
- Precision medicine is trending towards smaller and smaller population sizes that have common genomic lesions (e.g. BRCA1 mutations). How can we reverse the trend towards N-of-1s?
Senior Director, Discovery Bioinformatics, Exelixis
Christopher Szeto is a Bioinformatics and Machine-learning team leader with over 12 years of industry experience building data-driven solutions for clinical applications. His expertise is in clinically-focused R&D, gained from contributing to FDA-approved NGS products, digital pathology tools, as well as direct involvement in multiple clinical trials with a molecular diagnostic component. Chris is currently Sr. Director of Bioinformatics at Exelixis, Inc., a genomics-based oncology drug discovery company located in Alameda. Previously he held roles as Director of Bioinformatics at Zai Lab, a commercial stage biopharma based in China and the U.S., and Director of Machine Learning at NantWorks, a healthcare technology company. He obtained his Ph.D. from UCSC in 2013 on a Fulbright scholarship studying under Prof. David Haussler, during which he was involved in coordinating data and predictive analytics for the TCGA project.
Scalability in cancer microbiology
- Liquid Biopsy – as this technology matures what are the current challenges to scaling to demand?
When your patient samples and training sets consist of varying sample types (tissue, blood, etc.), what are the rate limiting steps for High Throughput processing?
Immuno Oncology, Cancer MicroBiome, Single Cell processing – considerations when scaling rapidly evolving technologies in the clinic?
Senior Bioinformatics Scientist, Tecan
Michael is a senior bioinformatician at Tecan and adjunct faculty at UCLA where he regularly teaches NGS-oriented bioinformatics workshops. He has experience both in on the wet- and dry-lab sides with significant experience in cancer genomics and immunology as well as metagenomics, CRISPR design and safety, medical genetics, and public health.
Spotlight Presentation
Changing the paradigm for liquid biopsy: Signatera as a tool for predicting therapy response
- Overview of Signatera (MRD) assay for MRD and clinical applications
- Why a tumor-informed approach using ctDNA in clinical trials
- Using ctDNA as a biomarker to expedite drug development
Staff Scientist Research and Development, Translational Medicine, Natera
Shruti serves as Staff Scientist of Research & Development in the Translational Medicine department at Natera. She brings more than 15 years of experience in the field of human genomics of complex diseases, providing strategic and scientific leadership for expanding and transforming oncology products.
Poster Session
Overview of Abiosciences solutions and services
Abiosciences, Inc is established to harness the power of single-cell multi-omics and bioinformatics to gain molecular insights into human diseases. We offer single-cell and spatial solutions through our genomic laboratory services, bioinformatic services, Omni browser software and Omni database, as well as our patient straightification strategy solution based on single-cell data. We have been working with our pharma and biotech customers to process their precious patient samples and obtain valuable single-cell multiomic data as well as spatial transcriptome data. We also have worked with our clients to gain deeper understanding of their single-cell data, or public data either through our customized bioinformatic solutions, or
through our Omni browser/dataset. Recently we have also started to work on straightifying patients undergoing Immune Checkpoint Therapeutics (ICT) through single cell multiomics and bioinformatics. In summary, we welcome interested scientists and partners to engage with us
and find out more.
Director of Genomics, Abiosciences
Jasmine Chen Ph.D. is the Director of Genomics at Abiosciences, Inc, leading a team on multi-
omics single cell genomics and spatial genomics in preclinical and clinical studies. Dr. Chen
received her Ph.D. in Cell Biology and Pathology at Columbia University in New York, and
completed her postdoctoral training at University of California, San Francisco. Prior to joining
Abiosciences, Dr. Chen worked in the Next Generation Sequencing Core at Genentech, Inc,
where she evaluated single cell technologies and contributed to its broader applications for
discovery research and biomarker identification.
Associate Director of Sales & Marketing, Abiosciences
Derek leads the US sales and marketing team at Abiosciences. He is a molecular biologist specializing in NGS applications, including single-cell transcriptomics, and immune profiling. Derek received his Master’s from California State University and has collaborated on several studies focused on using transcriptomics and epigenomics to profile rare diseases.
Next-gen technologies for scalable genetic manipulation and screening
- What lessons and actionable discoveries have been gained through large-scale, consortium-driven cancer gene dependency mapping efforts?
- What are the most effective gene perturbation technologies for enabling today’s researchers as they plan their own functional genomics screens?
- How are advances in genome sequencing methods enhancing functional genomics? What are the current limits of those methods, and what are likely to be the near-term breakthroughs?
Distinguished Scientist, Genentech
During his graduate studies with Phillip Zamore at UMass Medical School, Ben unraveled several key mechanisms that characterize the RNAi pathway and, at the same time, increased our understanding of the specificity limits of RNAi. After receiving his PhD, Ben went to Michael Levine’s lab at UC Berkeley as an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow. There, he developed an enhanced Drosophila RNAi system for in vivo applications, further refined the in vivo specificity of RNAi, and also identified novel aspects of small RNA biogenesis and mRNA structure/expression using various model organisms. Following his postdoc, Ben joined the Molecular Biology Department at Genentech, Inc. There, he oversees separate research teams focused on developing technologies to better model human disease or therapeutic intervention in vitro and in vivo. In addition, his teams contribute nucleic acid and genome engineering expertise to support Genentech’s mRNA, Cell, and Gene Therapy research programs.
16:45 – 17:45
Liquid-biopsy and tissue-biopsy for personalized cancer genomics
- What are the major challenges in personalized cancer genomics in therapeutic target selection and efficacy monitoring in precision medicine?
- What technological advancements have helped us interrogate these challenges with biopsies from complimentary sources?
- How can we validate the finding from liquid biopsy to support clinical trial?
- What can we learn from liquid and tissue biopsy to make informed decision?
Director of Bioinformatics,
Amplify-Bio
Sam joined Amplify-Bio recently as director of bioinformatics, bringing years of experience in cancer genomics in various biopharmaceutical companies. Previously at PACT Pharma, Sam built computational biology team, led the bioinformatics efforts in IND filing and clinical trial in developing personalized TCR-T cell therapy. Prior to PACT, Sam held various positions with increasing responsibilities at Amgen where he contributed to drug discovery and target identification across multiple therapeutic areas in immunoncology and metabolic disorders. Sam has extensive experience in leading multi-functional team to develop cloud based NGS pipeline to support neoantigen-TCR based drug development.
