The Journey to Realizing the Promise of Precision Medicine

Unless otherwise noted, P.A.C.E. accreditation will expire six months after the live webinar.

One goal of the Precision Medicine Initiative is to explore how precision medicine approaches can be applied in the area of cancer research. In 2015, the National Cancer Institute and three other leading cancer centers initiated the NCI-MATCH clinical trial, which analyzes an individual's tumor tissue using Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) to screen for relevant mutations that can be tied to targeted therapies. While the initial focus of the NCI-MATCH trial is to study adult tumor tissue samples, the Center for Personalized Medicine at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles has developed a precision genomics approach to properly analyze pediatric cancer research samples, due to the distinctive nature of driver mutations seen in such cancer types. In the journey to realizing the promise of precision medicine, NGS has quickly emerged as a helpful tool to study multiple genes and mutation types in a single assay, thus preserving precious samples and significantly reducing the time it takes to get results.

Learning Objectives

This complimentary, P.A.C.E.™-accredited webinar will help participants:

• Understand how next-generation sequencing (NGS) helps labs save precious samples and get rapid resultss
• Review the short-term goals of the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) and how precision medicine practices can be applied in the area of cancer research
• Determine how NGS can enable a clinical lab to properly deliver rapid results to oncologists
• Learn how your laboratory can implement NGS for cancer clinical research

Watch On Demand

Download Slides - Timothy Triche

Download Slides - P. Mickey Williams

This webinar is produced by Whitehat Communications, a provider of continuing education programs in clinical laboratory sciences that has been approved by the ASCLS P.A.C.E. Program. One P.A.C.E. credit hour will be provided for this complimentary, basic-level program.

Timothy Triche, MD, PhD
Pathologist; Co-Director, Center for Personalized Medicine Program 
Professor of Pathology and Pediatrics, USC Keck School of Medicine
CHLA Center for Personalized Medicine
Los Angeles, CA

Dr. Triche is the founding Director of the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) Center for Personalized Medicine. He previously served as Chief of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine for over 20 years. He is also Professor of Pathology and Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. At Children’s Hospital, his research is focused on high-risk childhood cancer, including molecular diagnostics and nanoparticle therapeutics, as part of an overall focus on precision, or personalized, treatment of childhood cancer. He is the author of over 250 peer-reviewed publications and has received over $40 million in NIH or equivalent funding as PI, and has been a co-PI or co-investigator on over $100 million of other grants. He has also received over $5 million of private research funding.

He received his undergraduate degree in physics and biology from Cornell University in 1966, where he was a Cornell National Scholar, and MD and PhD degrees from Tulane University in 1971. He received his specialty training in pathology and surgical pathology at Barnes Hospital-Washington University School of Medicine, where he also did a post-doctoral fellowship in cancer-associated lectin biochemistry. He subsequently did a further fellowship at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), which resulted in a tenured faculty position at the NCI as Section Chief, Laboratory of Pathology, focusing on pediatric cancer diagnosis, treatment, and research, a position he held for 14 years prior to coming to CHLA.

P. Mickey Williams, PhD
Director, Molecular Characterization Laboratory
National Cancer Institute at Frederick
Frederick, MD

Dr. Williams directs the Molecular Characterization Laboratory, established by the NCI, Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis, to focus on the development of state of the art genomic technologies for clinical research. Laboratory goals are to assist in the development and application of validated clinical assays to support cancer patient management.

One of the several ongoing projects is the development and implementation of massively parallel sequencing assays for selection of patients for early stage clinical trials.

Dr. Williams has been active in the use of molecular technologies for drug-target discovery.  During his thirteen years at Genentech, he developed novel assays to support clinical studies and discover new therapeutic targets. He was the author of the first quantitative real-time PCR papers and contributed to the development of this powerful technology. 

Prior to joining Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research in 2010, he was a senior research group leader at Roche Molecular Diagnostics. While at Roche, he led the research effort and managed two large multinational clinical assay studies: The Microarray Innovations in Leukemia Study, and collaboration with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Molecular Profiling Project. He also initiated two projects that have subsequently been approved by the FDA as IVD kits. He has published over 50 manuscripts and is an inventor on over 30 issued U.S. Patents. He received his PhD from the University of Virginia.