May 17-18

OPENING PLENARY SESSION

Big Data and the Evolution of Precision (Personalized) Medicine

George Poste, Ph.D., Chief Scientist, Complex Adaptive Systems, Professor, Health Innovation, Arizona State University

Next Steps in Cancer Immunotherapy

Eric H. Rubin, M.D., Vice President and Therapeutic Area Head, Oncology Early Development, Merck Research Laboratories

microRNA AND ncRNA BIOMARKERS

Clinical Biomarker Development: Well Begun Is Half Done

Xuemei Zhao, Ph.D., Principal Scientist, Translational Molecular Biomarkers, Merck

microRNAs as Biomarkers of Pancreatic Cancer

Subrata Sen, Ph.D., Professor and Deputy Chair, Translational Molecular Pathology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Circulating microRNAs as Progression Biomarkers for Parkinson's Disease

Sok Kean Khoo, Ph.D., Distinguished Associate Professor, Molecular Genomics, Cell & Molecular Biology, Grand Valley State University Michigan

miRNA as a Biomarker for Multiple Sclerosis

Roopali Gandhi, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Neurology, Head of MS Biomarkers, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School

Sifting Treasure from Trash: Mining for Extracellular RNA Markers of Cardiac Remodeling

Saumya Das, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Medicine, Harvard Medical School

CIRCULATING TUMOR DNA AS BIOMARKERS AND DIAGNOSTICS

Prognostic Relevance and Genetic Profile of Circulating Tumor Cells and Circulating Tumor DNA in the Late Stage of Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients

Huifeng Niu, Ph.D., Director, Translational Medicine, Takeda Pharmaceuticals

Novel Methods for Enrichment of Mutations and Differentially Methylated Sequences from Liquid Biopsy Genomes

G. Mike Makrigiorgos, Ph.D., Professor, Radiation Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School

Ultrasensitive Measurement of Circulating Tumor DNA to Track Treatment Response and Failure

Abhijit A. Patel, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Therapeutic Radiology, Yale University School of Medicine

cfDNA and Circulating Biomarkers in Brain Cancers

Matthias Holdhoff, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Oncology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Rare Mutation Enrichment Using Molecular Competition Probes and Primers

David Yu Zhang, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Bioengineering, Rice University

Circulating Tumor DNA: Applications and Challenges

Dr. Theresa Zhang, Vice President, Research Services, Personal Genome Diagnostics