Session Abstract – PMWC 2017 Silicon Valley
Session Synopsis:
As immunotherapies becomes a backbone of cancer treatment, biomarker assays will be critical to optimizing the use of immunotherapies as single agent or in combinations. This panel will explore how leading biopharma and academic researchers are identifying biomarkers and developing companion diagnostics for immuno-oncology.
Session Chair Profile
President & CEO, Nanostring Technologies
Biography
R. Bradley Gray has served as a member of the Board of Directors and as President and CEO of NanoString since June 2010. Prior to joining our company, Mr. Gray held various positions at Genzyme Genetics, including VP of Product & Business Development, VP of Business & Strategic Development, and Director of Corporate Development. Prior to Genzyme, Mr. Gray was a healthcare management consultant for McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm. He received a B.A. in Economics and Management from Oxford University, where he studied as a British Marshall Scholar, and an S.B. in Chemical Engineering from MIT.
Speaker Profile
M.D., Ph.D., Cancer Immunotherapy Product Development, Genentech
Biography
Dr. Chen received a B.S. degree in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1990), a Ph.D. in Microbiology & Immunology (1996) and M.D. (1998) from the University of Southern California. Daniel completed an Internal Medicine Residency and Medical Oncology Fellowship at Stanford University (2003). He went on to complete a postdoctoral fellowship with Mark Davis in Immunology, where he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Associate. He also ran the metastatic melanoma clinic at the Stanford Cancer Center from 2003-2006, where he continues to care for melanoma patients. In that time, he studied human anti-cancer immune responses pre- and post-cancer vaccination and cytokine administration to determine why anti-tumor immune responses were not more clinically effective. He received a U19 grant to develop better immunologic tools to interrogate human immune responses and ultimately patented the MHC cellular microarray to detect and functionally characterize antigen-specific T cell states. Since joining Genentech in 2006, Daniel has focused on the clinical development of anti-angiogenic and immune modulatory targeted therapies in both early and late development, as well as the diagnostic tools to aid their development. He is a reviewer for Nature, Immunity, and Clinical Cancer Research, co-chair of the CRI Cancer Immunotherapy Consortium and gave the keynote presentation at the AACR NCI EORTC Annual Meeting 2014. He has continued to publish with academic and Genentech collaborators in the field of cancer immunotherapy, including the often referenced Chen and Mellman manuscript, “Oncology meets Immunology: the Cancer-Immunity Cycle.”
Speaker Profile
M.D., DABP, Executive Medical Director and Head of Companion Diagnostics, Merck & Co.
Biography
Dr. Emancipator led the Merck team which partnered with Agilent Technologies to develop the 22C3 PD-L1 immunohistochemistry test which identifies those non-small cell lung cancer patients most likely to benefit from Keytruda® (pembrolizumab), which is the first FDA-approved companion diagnostic in cancer immunotherapy, and which enabled Keytruda to become the first immunotherapy to be approved for first-line treatment of lung cancer. He was one of six members of the Keytruda Team to receive the 2015 PhRMA Research and Hope Award for Biopharmaceutical Industry Research on behalf of Merck. His has held positions at National Institutes of Health, Cornell University Medical College, Beth Israel Medical Center (NY), and Bayer Healthcare. He is a former officer of the American Society for Clinical Pathology, and is a regular reviewer for the American Journal of Clinical Pathology. His credits include more than 100 papers and abstracts, and more than 100 extramural presentations.
Speaker Profile
M.D., Vice President, Development, Oncology & Pharmacodiagnostics, Bristol-Myers Squibb
Biography
Dr. Averbuch established and leads Bristol-Myers Squibb’s (BMS) Pharmacodiagnostics Center of Excellence, whose mission is to drive precision medicine strategy across all therapeutic areas through integrated co-development and co-commercialization of diagnostic tests as companions to BMS medicines. Dr. Averbuch joined BMS in 2006. Previous responsibilities include leadership of: BMS’s immuno-oncology clinical collaborations and corporate strategic initiatives for Translational and Targeted Medicine, Oncology early strategy team (co-lead), executive sponsor for Oncology Transition Teams (execution of Phase 2 programs), and executive oversight for all late development and marketed oncology compound translational activities. Dr. Averbuch held positions at Merck, AstraZeneca, and Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He received his M.D. and Internal Medicine training from the University of Illinois, Chicago and Medical Oncology training at the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland. Dr. Averbuch is active on committees and boards of several professional organizations and has authored 60+ peer reviewed publications and book chapters.
