PMWC 2017 Silicon Valley, attended by over 1,300 conference participants from 26 countries, showcased 290 presenters in four parallel tracks and 66 exhibitions. See photos and videos from the conference.

As Dr. Euan Ashley (Stanford Health Care) succinctly noted in his opening words: “To state the obvious: genomic medicine is here.” It is both a privilege and invigorating to be part of this amazing community that is committed to making a difference and changing the status quo of healthcare and medicine. Many indications of change have recently emerged and are now clearly visible. Among them are the continuous drop in the cost of genome sequencing, the launch and progression of relevant initiatives (Cancer Moonshot, All of Us, Microbiome, Brain Initiative, Chinese Precision Medicine Alliance), the rise of new technological advancements that include CRISPR and liquid biopsy, successful applications and therapies in immunotherapy, and the emergence of new companies that propel the field forward.

Some conference highlights included:

• A huge emphasis in presentations, talks, and discussions was put on data sharing. We heard it from the former FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf, the panel on Data Sharing, as well as Greg Simon the former Cancer Moonshot Task Force Executive Director.
• A history lesson on immunotherapy and its emerging applications from Dr. James Allison
• The $100 genome is near as proposed by BGI who suggested they will reach this price point by 2020. This went hand in hand with the recent Illumina announcement also suggesting the $100 genome with their new instrument NovaSeq.
• Hearing an update on how the bacterial CRISPR adaptive immune system has been harnessed as a powerful genome engineering tool by Dr. Jennifer Doudna.
• Gaining insights into sequencing in healthy individuals for the purpose of disease prevention and wellness, and how it will change and demystify disease by Dr. Robert Green and emerging companies like Helix and Arivale.
• Further deciphering the microbiome, an important component of our lives that can’t be ignored much longer, as it will redefine biomarkers, pharmacology and ultimately the creation of effective new therapeutics.

We are still facing challenges that need to be overcome:

• We should not just generate data, but also share data.
• We need to standardize data to be able to create larger data islands.
• Education is everything – educating the patient that his/her data is most useful in the context of other data, and educating the physician and clinician about clinical findings.
• We need to overcome interoperability challenges by meaningful integration of medical records data.
• We need to be able to scale operations to support the clinical tests that will be upon us in the near future.

And the winners are:

• Gritstone Oncology and Two Pore Guys – tied for PMWC 2017 SV Most Promising Company Award – Accuragen placed 3^rd.
  • For the 11^th time PMWC held the “Most promising new company competition” from across diagnostics, therapeutics, and health tech companies.
  • 17 companies were selected to present at the conference, with the three finalists competing for the Most Promising Company Award.
• Congratulations to the winners and all selected presenting companies!

Here are some concluding quotes from the event:

• James Allison (MD Anderson Cancer Center): “Without basic science, we aren’t going to have anything more to translate!”
• Euan Ashley (Stanford Healthcare): “Can we understand better? Can we treat better? That’s the essence of precision medicine.”
• Robert Califf (FDA): “There is no such thing as a safe medical product. It is always a matter of balance between safety and benefit, risk and benefit.”
• Peter Donnelly (Oxford): “We have roughly sequenced 100K people today. In 10 years it’ll be 1 billion people.”
• Lindy Morris Fishburne (Breakout Labs, Thiel Foundation): “The fallout of Theranos disaster is that tech VCs who were tip-toeing into life science have backed off.”
• Kathy Giusti (Multiple Myeloma Foundation): “One must ask the right question to find the right answers.”
• Sam Hawgood (UCSF): “We have to work hard to make sure that for all our new tools, we need to drive costs down for all that we serve.”
• Lincoln Nadauld (Intermountain Healthcare): “Soon, patients will demand to own their health records. The paternalistic era is over.”
• Robert Nussbaum (Invitae): “In no other area of medicine (but genomics) do people actively ‘hide’ data– we need clear ethical standards.”
• Randy Scott (Invitae): “Within 20 years the number of ‘genome subscribers’ will rival the number of cell phone subscribers…”
• Greg Simon (Cancer Moonshot): “The Cancer Moonshot is now a movement not just a government program anymore. Change begins with us!”
• Sharon Terry “(Genetic Alliance): “We need to make data sharing as transparent and easy as a PayPal transaction.”
• Keith Yamamoto (UCSF): “In digital health, if we don’t speed up, we are going to get run over by patients.”

We hope to see many of you at upcoming PMWC conferences where you’ll have an opportunity to follow the latest directions and developments in the field of Precision Medicine:

• PMWC 2017 Duke on May 24-25
• PMWC 2018 Silicon Valley on January 22-24

To learn about upcoming conferences and receive access to more presentations and video recordings, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.