Precision Oncology: from bench to bedside
Tuesday 19 September 2023
Seminar 11.00am-12.00pm
Lunch/networking 12.00pm-1.00pm
Space 1, Radcliffe Conference Centre, University of Warwick
In-person event
Precision medicine for cancer has been a topic at the forefront of medical research as it offers novel therapies to groups of patients based on biomarker signatures leading to improved outcomes. At Warwick, our academics are tackling important methodological challenges in Precision Oncology via interdisciplinary research. The Warwick Cancer Research Centre invites you to the Cancer Colloquium on "Precision Oncology: from bench to bedside". World expert Professor Robert Beckman, clinical oncologist and methodologist at Georgetown University, will deliver a keynote talk.
Robert Beckman, M.D., Professor of Oncology and of Biostatistics, Bioinformatics, and Biomathematics at Georgetown University Medical Center, is an oncology clinical researcher and mathematical biologist who has played significant leadership roles in developing new oncology clinical research groups at 4 pharmaceutical companies and in 5 cross-company collaborations, and brought 23 new oncology therapies into man, and 2 to market. He has co-invented novel clinical study designs and development strategies for oncology and rare diseases, and leads the Drug Information Association Innovative Design Scientific Working Group, a 250-person international group in this field. Dr. Beckman’s theoretical studies of cancer evolution predicted broad features of tumor evolution before experimental results were available, and have more recently led to a new approach to cancer precision medicine, dynamic precision medicine, which holds promise for significant improvement in patient outcomes. Dr. Beckman’s versatile publication record of over 300 articles, patents, and presentations ranges from computational chemistry to clinical oncology, emphasizing quantitative approaches.
Agenda |
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| 11.00 | Welcome and Introduction |
| 11.05 | Robert Beckman Evolutionary Guided Precision Medicine for Cancer Current precision medicine of cancer matches therapies to patients based on average molecular properties of the tumour, resulting in significant patient benefit. However, despite the success of this approach, resistance to drugs develops leading to variability in the duration of response. The approach is based on static molecular patterns observed at diagnosis whereas cancers are constantly evolving. We, therefore, focus on Dynamic Precision Medicine, an evolutionary-guided precision medicine strategy that explicitly considers intra-tumour heterogeneity and subclonal evolution and plans ahead in order to delay or prevent resistance. Clinical validation of such an evolutionary strategy poses challenges and requires bespoke development of clinical trial designs. In this talk, I will present preliminary results on the construction of such trial designs. The work is a joint collaboration between Georgetown and Warwick. |
| 12.00 | Lunch |