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2010

Time: The Crucial Fourth Dimension of Personalized Medicine


During the U.S. healthcare deliberations, the words invention, technology, diagnostics, and wellness were mentioned rarely, if ever. No one said “revolution in healthcare” and yet a healthcare revolution is underway. Never before could a physician peer into the body, blood, or DNA of a patient and “see” the risk of disease for that person or “see” a disease at such an early stage that intervention might be crucial. That vision defines personalized medicine, which includes actionable measurements of genotype and phenotype – DNA and proteins.

For the inaugural symposium, Gold Lab invited medical and scientific thought leaders and stakeholders to debate and inform each other and the audience on how best to facilitate the most timely transformation of medicine. “Our motivation is simple,” said Dr. Larry Gold, Professor, MCDB, University of Colorado and CEO of SomaLogic, “Scientists are responsible for innovations; scientists also must participate in discussions that enable the timely use of those innovations. An informed citizenry is at the heart of an improved healthcare system.”

    • Opening Remarks 2010

      Dr. Larry Gold is the Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Board, and former CEO of SomaLogic. Prior to SomaLogic, he also founded and was the Chairman of NeXagen, Inc., which later became NeXstar Pharmaceuticals, Inc. In 1999, NeXstar merged with Gilead Sciences, Inc. to form a global organization committed to the discovery, development and commercialization of novel products that treat infectious diseases.

  • Personalized Medicine Technologies: Omics for Everyone

    • Human Genetics and Disease

      The past 30 years have seen a revolution in knowledge of the basis of genetic disease. While early efforts focused on single gene, Mendelian disorders, efforts over the past decade have focused on common, complex diseases, empowered by new technological and statistical approaches in genomics and genetics. From linkage studies to candidate gene association studies to genomewide association studies (GWAS)...

    • Protein Biomarkers: A Blood Test for Early Stage Non Small Cell Lung Cancer

      Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S. at 160,000/year because most cases are diagnosed in later stages and the disease is histologically heterogeneous. New clinically effective diagnostic methods are urgently needed to identify lung cancer in earlier stages when surgical resection has the potential for curative therapy. Of concern is that the U.S. cigarette smoking...

    • Monitoring Wellness: Blood Tests for Many Diseases

      The dream of transforming medical practice by measuring individualized actionable medical and lifestyle data for all common conditions from a single blood test has not been realized. Genetic approaches alone can never accomplish this promise despite the billions spent. Obstacles to accomplishing it are technical, human, and economic.

      Technical obstacles include poor productivity in multiplexed technologies for new...

    • Time: Personalized Medicine’s Final Frontier

      Despite current excitement, the truth is that medicine has always been “personalized.” However, traditional personalized medicine has been based on both an extremely limited knowledge of presenting phenotype and an even more limited number of effective therapeutic possibilities.

      The current interest in a new kind of personalized medicine comes as emerging technologies are pushing back the frontier of phenotype,...

  • Diagnostic Information, Connectedness, and Drugs: Systems Infrastructures

    • Sustaining Healthcare Innovation in an Era of Constraint

      Rapid progress in molecular biology offers the promise of major gains in the detection, treatment and prevention of diseases and for targeting therapeutic interventions to match the molecular and pharmacogenetic profiles of individual patients (personalized medicine).

      Molecular diagnostics, next-generation imaging and miniaturized on body: in-body sensors will assume increasing importance in the healthcare value chain as powerful technology...

    • Diagnostics in the Reference Labs: Putting the Patient First

      Technologies are rapidly maturing, which enable evaluation of disease specific and informative molecules with high sensitivity and on a large scale. The rate of new marker discovery is therefore advancing rapidly and so focus on diagnostics with high value for individual patients is at risk of being lost in scientific excitement – more is not necessarily better.

      In...

    • The Healthcare Ecosystem: Connecting the Parts

      The wireless industry is revolutionizing Life Sciences by partnering with medical device companies to create innovative, connected health solutions. Wireless body-worn sensors, environmental sensors, medical implants, and smart phone apps are increasing the efficacy and efficiency of medical solutions.

      Whether it is enabling real-time streaming of a patient’s biometric data, in-body drug delivery systems, wireless pills, or remote...

    • Improved Interventions: Drug Use and Best Practices

      Medco is a leading pharmacy benefit manager (PBM), with the nation’s largest mail order pharmacy operations. Through advanced pharmacy, Medco improves the health and lowers the total cost of care for clients and their members, helping to ensure that millions of Americans have access to affordable, high-quality prescription healthcare. No two people respond to the same drug in exactly the...

    • A guided discussion with panelists led by Tom Cech

      A guided discussion with panelists led by Tom Cech, Ph.D., Professor, University of Colorado, former President, HHMI

  • Perspectives: Challenges to Change

    • Patient-Centered Care Perspectives: Views from Where We Stand, Sit, and Lie Down

      There’s a lot of buzz these days about patient experience. Lots of talk about becoming the Apple, Nordstrom, or Starbucks of health care. But what is the “patient’s perspective” and how is it relevant to the care provided? How can we see it, know it, capture it? What can we interpret from it? How can a patient’s perspective inform care...

    • Pathway-Specific Medicines: 21st Century Solutions to Unmet Medical Needs

      Cancer remains one of the great unmet medical needs with high morbidity and mortality. Older therapies relied upon exceedingly toxic methods, such as chemotherapy and radiation, which had marginal therapeutic indices.

      Since the discovery of the oncogene, biochemistry, and cell and molecular biologists have discovered a diversity of deregulated pathways in solid and liquid tumors. These discoveries have ushered...

    • The Parent Project: Advocating for Children’s Health

      Parents have children. They notice things, little things that just seem to separate their child from other children. They express these concerns to their healthcare providers and are often dismissed for months or sometimes years.

      And then, on what was supposed to be an ordinary day, there is a diagnosis, unfamiliar and often difficult to pronounce, accompanied by a...

    • The Gardasil Story: A Vaccine to Prevent Cervical Cancer

      Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is a potent carcinogen strongly linked with cervical cancer, but which also causes other benign and malignant diseases such as genital warts, and vulvar, vaginal, penile, and head and neck cancers. In this presentation, the clinical efficacy and safety of the quadrivalent HPV vaccine will be reviewed, and future implications will be discussed.

  • Societal Dimensions: Healthcare in the Promised Land

    • A New Moral Vision for Health Care

      American health policy has missed a crucial point. Medical ethics may control the behavior of health providers, but it should not control the macro-allocation process. Public policy must have its own independent ethical duties. Welcome to the Brave New World of Health Care that is fast heading our way.

    • Personalized Medicine: Facilitating a Partnership with the FDA

      The path to personalized medicine traverses a largely uncharted legal and regulatory landscape that offers both challenge and opportunity. As we advance rapidly into an era of medical treatment tailored to individuals with information from increasingly sophisticated diagnostic tests, the FDA and other regulators are faced with a new paradigm that includes labeling of approved drugs with companion diagnostics and...

    • New World. New Doctors. New Training

      The medical curriculum in this country emerged from a document written 100 years ago. Medical schools have built upon this scaffolding, improved curricula, and adapted to mind-boggling biomedical advances. Yet before our eyes, emerging global networks are bringing to health care a new and breathtaking change.

      The roles of health care providers, patients, families, and researchers are evolving. The...

    • Growing Pains: The Evolution Toward Consumer-Driven Medicine

      The piece-parts now exist. The context supports disruptive change. Advances in molecular science and personalized medicine will further increase consumer demand. Private investors are seeking promising opportunities in care delivery. Major non-healthcare players are looking for opportunities to bring their know-how in scale, high performance, and technology infrastructure to health care.

      What stands in the way of this transformation;...

  • Closing Remarks

    • Closing Remarks 2010

      Dr. Larry Gold is the Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Board, and former CEO of SomaLogic. Prior to SomaLogic, he also founded and was the Chairman of NeXagen, Inc., which later became NeXstar Pharmaceuticals, Inc. In 1999, NeXstar merged with Gilead Sciences, Inc. to form a global organization committed to the discovery, development and commercialization of novel products that treat infectious diseases.