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Dr. Larry Gold is the Founder 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.
During his nearly 10 years at NeXstar, Dr. Gold held numerous executive positions including Chairman of the Board, Executive Vice President of R&D, and Chief Science Officer. Before forming NeXagen, he also co-founded and served as Co-Director of Research at Synergen, Inc., a biotechnology company later acquired by Amgen, Inc. Dr. Gold recently became the CEO of Lab79, a new biotech company in Boulder, Colorado.
Since 1970, Dr. Gold has been a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. While at the University, he served as the Chairman of the Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology Department from 1988 to 1992. Between 1995 and 2013, Dr. Gold received the CU Distinguished Lectureship Award, the National Institutes of Health Merit Award, the Career Development Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Colorado Biosciences Association, and the Chiron Prize for Biotechnology. Dr. Gold was also awarded the 8th International Steven Hoogendijk Prize by the Dutch Batavian Society of Experimental Philosophy in 2018.
In addition, Dr. Gold has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1993 and the National Academy of Sciences since 1995. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. Dr. Gold also serves on the Board of Directors for CompleGen, Plato BioPharma, Lab79, Keck Graduate Institute, and the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study.
Dr. Gold established the Gold Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1971. Starting with basic research on bacteria and bacteriophage, the lab shifted its focus to human disease following the invention of the SELEX process in 1989. The Gold Lab today focuses on the utilization of biological and information technology to improve healthcare. Dr. Gold also began holding the GoldLab Symposia in 2010, an annual event that tackles big questions in healthcare. He is determined to change healthcare for the better through teaching, research, and debate among scientists and citizens throughout the world.
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Abstract coming soon!
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Exploring the principles and import of an integral approach to human anatomy supported with visuals from the laboratory. Biography
Since 1995, Gil Hedley, Ph.D., has been teaching “integral anatomy” in the dissection laboratory, via keynotes and speaking tours, online via his extensive website and membership portal, www.gilhedley.com and via his YouTube channel, “Somanaut.” He is the producer of The Integral Anatomy Series, the Anatomy from A to Z Project, and The Nerve Project, as well as being the author of several books. He is based at the Institute for Anatomical Research in Colorado Springs, CO, where he teaches, films, and serves as Board President.
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To survive as a species, all organisms must protect their genome integrity from invaders. Several billion years ago, archaebacteria evolved selective defenses such as CRISPR-Cas to specifically cut DNA sequences in invading bacteriophage. Multicellular eukaryotes like us needed to evolve new defenses to protect our genome integrity against intracellular infections such as retroviruses, to defend against extracellular infections (e.g., bacteria, fungi); and to recognize and repair sterile tissue damage (e.g. trauma). To differentiate these three broad categories of “danger”, we evolved an innate immune system that uses several families of “pattern recognition receptors” to “taste” their environment for the presence of molecules that are associated with these three fundamental flavors of danger: i) intracellular infections (e.g., retroviruses); ii) extracellular infections (e.g., bacteria, fungi); and iii) sterile tissue damage. Activation of different subsets of pattern recognition receptors in innate immune cells causes the activation of threat-appropriate adaptive immune defenses to eradicate infection and promote homeostasis and tissue healing. Recent discoveries have provided fresh insights into how these systems normally cooperate to keep us healthy, how their failure can lead to autoimmune diseases and to cancer, and how therapeutic manipulation of pattern recognition receptors can be applied to treat disease. Biography
Arthur M. Krieg, MD has worked in the oligonucleotide field since the 1980s. Art graduated from Haverford College in 1979, received his MD from Washington University in 1983, and completed a residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Minnesota in 1986. He was a Staff Fellow at the NIH in the Arthritis Institute from 1986 to 1991, when he joined the University of Iowa, becoming Professor of Internal Medicine in the Division of Rheumatology. He has had 19 years of patient care experience, although his focus has always been on basic research and teaching. Art discovered the immune stimulatory CpG DNA motif in 1994, which led to a new approach to immunotherapy and vaccine adjuvants. Based on this technology he co-founded Coley Pharmaceutical Group in 1997, discovering and taking 4 novel oligonucleotides into clinical development, including the anthrax vaccine adjuvant CpG 7909 in AV7909 (NuThrax®). Art was co-founder, CSO of Coley Pharmaceutical Group from 1997 until its acquisition and incorporation into Pfizer in 2008. He then served as CSO of Pfizer’s Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Unit from 2008 to 2011, becoming co-founder and CEO at RaNA Therapeutics from 2011 to 2013, and CSO at Sarepta until July 2014. In 2015 he founded Checkmate Pharmaceuticals to develop novel oligonucleotides for cancer immunotherapy and then served as CSO until its acquisition by Regeneron in 2022. Art co-founded the first antisense journal, Nucleic Acid Therapeutics, which he edited for 16 years, and the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society, for which he recently served as President. Art is currently an adjunct Professor in the UMass Chan Medical School RNA Therapeutics Institute and serves on the scientific advisory boards of several companies developing oligonucleotide therapeutics. He has published more than 250 scientific papers (h-index = 131) and is an inventor on >50 issued US patents covering oligonucleotide technologies.
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A discussion focusing on tools for coronary artery disease screening, risk stratification, and treatment including novel use of proteomics in preventing cardiac vascular events.Biography
Board certified in cardiovascular medicine, nuclear medicine and internal medicine, Dr. Trujillo is a 1988 graduate of George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington, DC. He did his undergraduate work at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, earning a bachelor’s degree of science and engineering in 1984.
After medical school, Dr. Trujillo spent much of the 1990s at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver where he completed his residency in internal medicine as well as fellowships in cardiology and nuclear medicine. He has been in private practice in interventional cardiology at Boulder Heart since 1998.
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I will use my talk to champion the adoption of open-source antibodies to enhance reproducibility and transparency in biomedical research. We have established a pipeline for democratizing antibody availability through open-source antibodies, drawing a parallel to the benefits of open-source software. This entails not only making the ready-to-use antibodies available to the research community but also providing the material (plasmid or cell line) for end users to produce the antibodies themselves at low cost, and by supplying their code (i.e., the antibody sequences) for researchers to verify the identity of these critical research reagents, as well as customize them to meet their own research needs. By making computer code widely available to the user community, open-source software has greatly expanded the informed use and subsequent improvement of software, resulting in higher quality, increased security, and greater customization for end users, and being cost-effective due to its free access. We hope to achieve the same with open-source antibodies. We urge the biomedical research community to not only utilize the resources we have established, but to continue funding and supporting open-source antibody initiatives. We also encourage researchers who have developed antibodies and other binders to contribute them to these efforts, shifting access to these valuable research reagents towards an open-source model. Biography
As neuroscience enters the post-genomic era, a major goal is the translation of genomic sequence information into a molecular understanding of the mechanisms of neuronal information processing and transfer. Trimmer’s laboratory research focuses on protein function, biochemical pathways and networks of protein-protein interactions regulating intra- and inter-cellular signaling in mammalian neurons. In particular, we are interested in signaling complexes organized by voltage-sensitive ion channels. Ion channels determine the intrinsic electrical properties of neurons and how these cells respond to external stimuli, integrate the encoded information and generate an appropriate response. Modern proteomic techniques have allowed for insights into protein networks organized by ion channels that convert complex information encoded in electrical signals into biochemical signals universally recognized within the neuron. Our studies are aimed at a molecular understanding of how neuronal ion channels generate and maintain the fidelity of neuronal signaling, and how these processes can be dynamically regulated to generate neuronal plasticity. Such information is necessary for an increased understanding of not only the normal functional plasticity of neurons, but also in understanding of disease states where neuronal function is altered and effects of acute external insults such as ischemia and drugs of abuse, and represent a key step towards the development of therapeutics that can address these and other psychiatric and neurological disorders. Moreover, these studies are representative of approaches that would prove advantageous to studies on other neuronal signaling proteins. To better translate findings from genome-based studies, we have also established the UC Davis/NIH NeuroMab facility, to use information on proteins encoded in the human and other genomes to generate renewable and recombinant monoclonal antibodies and make them available in an open source manner to the research community.
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Abstract coming soon!
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Illumina’s mission to unlock the power of the human genome has led to the development of genome sequencers that have transformed clinical diagnostics and biomedical research. Illumina is building on that vision by extending the use of their sequencing instruments beyond traditional genomics with a portfolio of multiomics products spanning epigenetics, transcriptomics, and proteomics. These end-to-end multiomics products will enable researchers and clinicians to integrate diverse biological data streams, offering unprecedented insights into disease mechanisms and paving the way for more precise diagnostics and targeted therapeutic strategies.Biography
Mike Mehan leads the Multiomics Bioinformatics group at Illumina, driving innovations in epigenomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics. Illumina is a global leader in next-generation sequencing and enables researchers and clinicians to gain deeper insights from genomics data. Mike contributes to Illumina’s mission of transforming human health by working with his team to develop algorithms and software for Illumina’s portfolio of multiomics products. This new multiomics direction in sequencing combines diverse biological data to deliver a complete view of complex systems, unlocking new potential in disease diagnosis, customized therapies, and personalized medicine.
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Illumina’s mission to unlock the power of the human genome has led to the development of genome sequencers that have transformed clinical diagnostics and biomedical research. Illumina is building on that vision by extending the use of their sequencing instruments beyond traditional genomics with a portfolio of multiomics products spanning epigenetics, transcriptomics, and proteomics. These end-to-end multiomics products will enable researchers and clinicians to integrate diverse biological data streams, offering unprecedented insights into disease mechanisms and paving the way for more precise diagnostics and targeted therapeutic strategies.Biography
Mike Mehan leads the Multiomics Bioinformatics group at Illumina, driving innovations in epigenomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics. Illumina is a global leader in next-generation sequencing and enables researchers and clinicians to gain deeper insights from genomics data. Mike contributes to Illumina’s mission of transforming human health by working with his team to develop algorithms and software for Illumina’s portfolio of multiomics products. This new multiomics direction in sequencing combines diverse biological data to deliver a complete view of complex systems, unlocking new potential in disease diagnosis, customized therapies, and personalized medicine.
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We live among microbes that preceded us on Earth by a few billion years. As new kids on the block, we are hosts to more than thirty trillion bacterial organisms per person, not far from the total number of cells in the human body. Most commensal bacteria reside in our intestines where they are not only benign but also do useful things like help extract nutrients from food and protect us against pathogens. When these complex communities are disrupted by external perturbations such as exposure to broad-spectrum antibiotics or radiation treatment, health problems arise. One well-known condition where dysbiosis leads to overgrowth of toxin-producing bacteria is C. difficile infection, an often-lethal disease of the colon caused by an unquestionably bad bug. Gut dysbiosis can also cause distal health problems, including some neurological conditions, through what is known as the gut-brain axis. Restoring healthy gut microbiome by highly selective targeting of pathogenic bacteria may remedy multiple conditions where microbial toxins and metabolites contribute to pathology. Promoting robust, symbiotic microbiome diversity turns out to be good not just for bacterial gut communities but also, through maintenance of colonization resistance, for their evolutionarily much younger hosts.Biography
Nebojsa Janjic, Ph.D., is a co-founder, CEO and President of Crestone, Inc. Dr. Janjic has been involved with Boulder-based biotechnology companies throughout his professional career, beginning with NeXagen/NeXstar, the original aptamer company he joined at its inception in 1992 where he was responsible for creating a pipeline of drug candidates, which now include two FDA-approved aptamer-based drugs. His contributions included the discovery, preclinical development and early clinical development of Macugen, a first-in-class treatment for wet macular degeneration. Macugen, which received FDA approval in 2004, was named Innovative Pharmaceutical Product of the Year in 2005 and recognized by Nature Reviews Drug Discovery in 2013 as one of the most transformative drug classes of the prior 25 years.
After NeXstar merged with Gilead, Dr. Janjic co-founded Replidyne in 2000, a company focused on discovery and development of small-molecule antibacterial agents with novel mechanism of action. Initially a discovery-stage company, Replidyne built a pipeline of drug candidates across all stages of pre-clinical and clinical development through a combination of internal R&D and licensing. After Replidyne merged in 2008 with a medical device company uninterested in pharmaceuticals, he co-founded Crestone in 2009 to continue the development of antibacterial programs. Concurrently with the founding of Crestone, he joined SomaLogic, a company focused on proteomics, aptamer-based life sciences products and drug candidates, where he served as CSO through 2024.
Dr. Janjic received his B.S. degree in Molecular Biology and Ph.D. in Physical Organic Chemistry from the University of Washington in Seattle and completed his postdoctoral training at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla as a Cancer Research Institute Fellow.
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This session will focus on the critical role of public health in society as well as specific to the field of pediatric neurosurgery. Firearm injury represents the #1 means of death for our nation’s children. The effect on survivors is lifelong. The experience of waiting in the pediatric emergency department after a school shooting only to find that none of the victims survived has had an indelible effect on the speaker. The lecture will focus on his journey from pediatric neurosurgeon of 30 years, to narrative medicine writer, to firearm safety and public health advocate, including his steps and missteps along the way.Biography
Jay Wellons MD, MSPH holds the Cal Turner Chair of Pediatric Neurosurgery and is the Chief of the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery and Vice Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). He is a Professor in the Departments of Neurological Surgery, Pediatrics, Plastic Surgery, and Radiology.
He currently serves as President of the American Society of Pediatric Neurosurgeons and has served as co-chair of the editorial board of the Journal of Neurosurgery-Pediatrics and chaired the AANS/CNS Section on Pediatric Neurosurgery Annual Meeting that took place in Nashville in 2018.
Dr. Wellons received a B.A in English from the University of Mississippi in 1991, his medical degree from the University of Mississippi Medical School in 1995 and completed his residency in neurologic surgery at Duke University Medical Center in 2001. This was followed by a one-year fellowship in pediatric neurosurgery at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. He remained on faculty at UAB for a total of 10 years, obtaining an MSPH during that time, then came to Vanderbilt in September of 2012.
He has participated as a site investigator in two multi-institutional research networks centered on pediatric hydrocephalus and Chiari malformation surgical and patient-centered outcomes. While his past areas of interest include surgery for brain tumors, blood vessel malformations of the brain, and craniosynostosis, his current focus is on the surgical management of the Chiari Malformations, congenital neurosurgery, intrauterine neurosurgery, and lesions of the brachial plexus. He founded SOCKS (the Surgical Outcomes Center for Kids) at Vanderbilt in 2015 and served as the Medical Director until 2022. He also served as the VUMC Section of Surgical Sciences Vice Chair of Clinical Research from 2018-2022.
Dr. Wellons served as Program Director for the Neurosurgery Residency Training Program at Vanderbilt from 2014-2018 and was awarded the Robert S. McCleery Master Teacher Award for surgical resident education across all surgical disciplines by the Section of Surgical Sciences in 2022.
In addition to over 250 scientific publications, he has been a contributor to The New York Times Sunday Review, TIME, Garden and Gun Magazine, Fresh Air: NPR, and OprahDaily.com. His book All That Moves Us: A Pediatric Neurosurgeon, His Young Patients, and Their Stories of Grace and Resilience with publisher Penguin Random House debuted in June of 2022 and was named one of the top books of 2022 by The New Yorker and garnered a starred review by Publishers Weekly. His non-scientific writing focuses specifically on his specialty of pediatric neurosurgery, but also the broader field of medicine and the profound lessons learned from the children and parents that he has cared for over the last 30 years.
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There is a near-certain probability that we will face another COVID-like event. The challenge is that we can’t predict exactly what will come next. Drawing from his experience leading BARDA DRIVe, a newly formed U.S. government biosecurity unit, Sandeep will share key lessons from his experience in the pandemic response on how we can better prepare for a future "Threat X,” and how those same lessons have shaped his current work aimed at redesigning public health to be more durable, resilient, and effective at enhancing humanity’s health.Biography
Sandeep was the inaugural Director of BARDA’s Division of Research, Innovation, and Ventures (DRIVe), within the U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services (HHS), where he built and led a team that managed over $700M in funding in translational sciences and early stage companies to protect against global health security threats. Previously, Sandeep served in the Immediate Office of the HHS Secretary, where he founded KidneyX, a public-private partnership that catalyzed the development of breakthrough therapies for kidney disease and spearheaded the Presidential Advancing American Kidney Health Initiative, aimed at reforming the nation’s organ transplant system, getting more patients off dialysis, and increasing focus to prevent kidney failure. Prior to that he was a scientific analyst for Thomson Reuters, scientist for an SBIR-backed startup, and a Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the National Academy of Sciences.
