It was truly a pleasure to host this year’s soldout PMWC.

As Dr. Keith Yamamoto (UCSF) noted in his presentation, “precision medicine: audacious aspiration, worthy outcomes.” It was nice to see that we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to this aspiration as indications of worthy outcomes are truly emerging. Whether it is the continuous drop in the cost of genome sequencing, the launch of relevant initiatives, the rise of valuable cohorts, or the emergence of new companies that propel the field forward.

Some highlights included:

• An emphasis on available public and open source data – by Dr. Atul Butte
• Getting an overview of the precision medicine efforts under way at UCSF with the aim to ultimately understand why individuals respond differently to treatments and therapies, and subsequently translate these insights into the practice of more precise and predictive medicine worldwide  – by Dr. Keith Yamamoto
• Hearing about wellness and how it will change and demystify disease as demonstrated with the emerging company Arivale – by Dr. Lee Hood
• Learning about the many initiatives under way to improve cancer treatment and care – by Dr. Laura Esserman and Kathy Giusti
• Learning that our second genome, the microbiome can’t be ignored much longer as it will redefine biomarkers, pharmacology, and the creation of effective new therapeutics – by Drs. Bhatt and Cook and Mr. DiLaura

Of course, we learned there are also challenges that can’t be ignored and will need to be addressed before scalable clinical testing can be turned into a reality on a broad scale. These include:

• Collecting the right data to ask the right questions
• Understanding the intricacies of the multi-variant interactions and their impact on disease(s)
• Creating the “right” report that has minimal time impact on the pathologist
• Going beyond gene panels
• Integrating meaningful medical records data
• Sharing data and making it accessible
• Creating large enough cohorts so they will be informative for most conditions
• Scaling to the clinical tests that are upon us in the near future

We are also happy to share with you APPROVED POWER POINT PRESENTATIONS- PLEASE DO NOT DISTRIBUTE:
DAY 1 (Jan. 25): TRACKS 1,2,3,& 4 (download might be a bit slow)
DAY 2 (Jan. 26): TRACKS 1,2,3, & 4
DAY 3 (Jan. 27): TRACKS 1,2,& 3

We hope to see you at PMWC 2017 on January 23-25.
To learn about next conferences and receive access to more presentations and video recordings, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

-The PMWC Team