SC3: EMERGING APPLICATIONS OF CTDNA

MONDAY, AUGUST 19| MORNING, 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Franklin/McPherson

ABOUT THIS COURSE:

This short course will cover cutting edge applications and clinical trials that use ctDNA for monitoring, minimal residual disease, and plasma tumor mutation burden. The background basics, the technologies, the clinical evidence out there so far, and the highlights of the prospective designs that are underway will be discussed.

INSTRUCTOR BIOGRAPHY:

John Simmons, PhD, Vice President, Translational Medicine, Personal Genome Diagnostics

John Simmons, PhD is the Vice President of Translational Medicine at PGDx. In this role, John focuses broadly on scientific strategy and biomarker discovery and diagnostics development partnerships with pharma/biotech. Previously, John was at the National Cancer Institute where his research focused on identifying novel therapeutic strategies for multiple myeloma through chemical genomic approaches with a particular focus on drug combinations. He received his undergraduate degree in Biology with honors from American University and Ph.D. in Tumor Biology from Georgetown University as part of the NIH Graduate Partnership Program. As a post-doctoral fellow, he received the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) Research Fellow award to support his work in developing systems-level approaches for drug combination identification and prioritization.