Dr. Shirin Ford Guest Speaker presentation

On Friday May 2nd, iGEM and MHS STEM Board were proud to welcome Dr. Shirin Ford to MHS in an introduction to precise medicine as well as discussion of its future. Over 60 students and faculty attended. Below is a brief summary of her presentation for those who weren't able to attend; Dr. Ford welcomes any questions through email. Contact MHS STEM Board if you would like to get in touch with her.

For much of the past century (and all of human history), medicine has largely followed a "one size fits all" paradigm; every disease should have a handful of underlying causes which when effectively targeted, should enable successful treatment. While this approach has been highly successful in targeting a number of diseases, mainly pathogenic ones, it has not been successful in treating a number of diseases that are not quite as homogenous. Many genetic and chronic illnesses, especially cancer, are highly variable from individual to individual. The same drug that might work for one person might not work for another; the premise of precise medicine is that effective treatment of diseases should take into acccount each person's different genome, lifestyle, environment, etc. In recognition of precise medicine's potential both as an emerging field and clinical practice, President Obama recently unveiled a $215 million "Precise Medicine Initiative" with the sole goal of advancing precise medicine as a field and spurring more data-driven medical treatment. Dr. Ford, who spoke on Friday, is leading the thrust of these efforts as vice president of product development at Almac Diagnostics.

Some of the key questions driving precise medicine research include being able to predict the patient cohort that can respond to a particular drug, as well as how aggressive each treatment should be. Dr. Ford led the group that discovered key predictive markers for patient response to the use of Erbitux (cetuximab) in treating colorectla cancer; namely the correlation of EGFR ligand gene expression + presense of mutated K-ras gene in predicting treatment success. Many other examples were discussed; feel free to contact Dr. Ford if you are curious.

The future of precise medicine is bright, but as with any emerging field, key questions and challenges remain. How do you approve such individualized drugs when the relevant patient cohort for such a specific mutation or receptor is so small? The FDA needs to adjust in order to streamline the approval of smaller drugs that are the future of treating diseases like cancer. Who should have access to their medical data; do patients have the right to know? How can costs be minimized for drugs in smaller-scale production? Finally, the challenge of increasing "efficiency" in a corporate environment was raised: perhaps a better method of communicating between research groups and setting research agendas would prevent unnecessary duplication of efforts (especially when they fail) and allow a broader research agenda.

With the advent of affordable genomic sequencing and big health-data, precise medicine holds the key to understanding and addresssing the mechanisms behind some of the most malicious diseases known to humans today. Look forward to a future in which personalized medicine will be a reality :)

Thanks to all who attended; keep tuned for another presentation in June to wrap up the year.