This year, the fields of sequencing and immunotherapy had hot announcements at the 35th JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. And we have exciting sessions planned as follow-ups on these themes at next week’s PMWC 2017 Silicon Valley conference.
Sequencing
Many of the established companies in the space – both public and private – provided updates. Clearly, deep sequencing and its applications in diagnostics and therapeutics are shaping healthcare, be it in research, in the clinic, or across the pharmaceutical space. Major announcements included new partnerships (e.g. Illumina’s partnership with IBM Watson Healthcare, Philips, and Bio-Rad; and 10x Genomics’ collaboration with Perkin Elmer to automate and streamline next-generation sequencing workflows), the acquisition of OmicSoft by Qiagen, the launch of new solutions and product releases (e.g. PacBio improved key Sequel System applications including supporting software, the launch of the new HD Immunology Solution from 10x Genomics, and the launch of a new Illumina Bio-Rad Single-Cell Solution), and the thunder-stealing announcement of the $100-genome possibility with the new Illumina high-end sequencer series NovaSeq.
All of this news provides a nice introduction for our timely session at PMWC 2017 SV:
Emerging NGS technologies promise to revolutionize applications in the clinic. Recent advancements make them more affordable, faster, more accurate, and usable at higher scale, while promising to deliver on the new long-read sequencing demand and the advanced microfluidics technology from 10x Genomics that enables applications across many areas of genomics. Clearly, there is much to discuss about these revolutionary advancements and how they will impact clinical research and patient care.The exciting lineup for this panel includes 10x Genomics, Genia Technologies, Pacific Biosciences, and Roche. These experts will discuss recent progress and the associated technical hurdles that remain in advancing clinical genomics.Session Chair:
- Dr. Allison Ballmer, Roche
- Dr. Serge Saxonov, CEO 10x Genomics
- Dr. Stefan Roever, CEO Genia Technologies at Roche
- Dr. Stephen Turner, CTO Pacific Biosciences
- Dr. Stephane Budel, Partner DeciBio
JP Morgan HC also delivered a string of announcements and partnerships in the biotech space, with the $5.2 billion takeover of Ariad Pharma by Takeda – certainly the biggest news of this healthcare conference. Immunotherapy clearly took center-stage with many announcements and updates as more companies now invest in immunotherapy research and therapeutics. FDA granted priority review for combining Merck’s Keytruda immunotherapy with chemotherapy for advanced lung cancer treatment. Incyte and Merck announced an expansion of their collaboration on Incyte’s IDO inhibitor to combine it with Merck’s checkpoint inhibitor Keytruda in a widening array of clinical studies to include more tumor types. Newlink Genetics reported developing an IDO inhibitor in partnership with Roche. Roche announced priority review for their immunotherapy drug Tecentriq (an anti-PDL1 cancer immunotherapy for the treatment of metastatic non-small cell lung cancer) for the treatment of patients with advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma. Last but not least, there were discussions that suggest collaboration, coordination, and cooperation across parties should be prioritized with the unifying goal to cure cancer.
Our upcoming PMWC 2017 SV conference will have a series of sessions focusing on different aspects of immunotherapy:
There are many indications for which immunotherapy, over time, will become the new cancer standard-of-care for cancer. The current focus is to better understand long-term cure rates, the important role of combination therapy, and the relevance of biomarkers.This session includes an exciting lineup of speakers from MD Anderson Cancer Center, Adaptive Biotechnologies, Jounce Therapeutics, and Thermo Fisher Scientific discussing immunotherapy applications and therapies.Session chair:
- Dr. James Allison, MD Anderson Cancer Center
- Dr. Ilan Kirsch, Adaptive Biotechnologies
- Dr. Debbie Law, Jounce Therapeutics
- Dr. James H. Godsey, Thermo Fisher Scientific
- How Molecular Subtyping Can Aid Clinical Drug Development
- Clinical Trials in Immunotherapy
- Predictive Biomarkers and Companion Diagnostics for Immuno-Oncology
- Issues and Challenges of Immunotherapy
- Immunotherapy: Immunocheckpoint Inhibitors & Beyond
These recent developments perfectly set the stage for the 11th Precision Medicine World Conference (PMWC) taking place next week, January 23-25, in Silicon Valley.
We are thrilled to see how well the news from this year’s JP Morgan HC aligns with our upcoming PMWC 2017 conference agenda which focuses on the relevance and developments of next-generation sequencing, new applications in clinical diagnostics, and several sessions fully dedicated to immunotherapy advancements and its applications.
It is not too late to register. Secure your spot today!
PMWC 2017 is less than ONE WEEK AWAY
The PMWC team
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