Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference 2010
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MEETING REPORT
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Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference 2010 Shaping Future Medicine Anne Bardsley-Elliot Adis Journals, Auckland, New Zealand
Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s 17th International Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference convened February 3–5, 2010, at San Francisco’s Moscone North Convention Center, welcoming over 2700 attendees from 38 countries. Along with regular delegates, the 1223 participating companies, 130 exhibitors, and 44 sponsors engaged in the recurring Tri-Conference theme of ‘Shaping Future Medicine.’
questioned the postulated positive benefit of our digitized world on brain function, development, and aging. These are issues that all of us can personally relate to in this digital age, including the need to take on personal responsibility for one’s own health and wellness.
Cancer Profiling and Pathways Medicine: Personalized Breast Cancer
The conference again had a strong focus on personalized medicine, in all its multiple forms. Keynote speaker John Crowley, CEO of Amicus Therapeutics, Inc., captivated the audience with his truly personal story of social entrepreneurship in drug research, inspired by the 1998 diagnosis of glycogen storage disease type II (Pompe disease) – a rare and often fatal genetic neuromuscular disorder – in two of his infant children. Historically, drug companies have lacked the financial incentive to develop treatments for such orphan diseases. So Crowley, driven by motivation to help his own children and others affected by rare diseases, left his position at BristolMyers Squibb to become founding President and CEO of the startup biotech company Novazyme, and went on to raise over $US27 million in order to speed development of an enzyme replacement therapy, subsequently aided by the acquisition of Novazyme by Genzyme. Under orphan drug designation, Genzyme gained US FDA approval for alglucosidase alfa (Myozyme) in 2006. Crowley’s children participated in clinical trials of the drug, and he credits its use for their survival. Moving from the topic of taking on childhood genetic diseases to the neurobiology of aging, Keynote speaker Gary Small, MD, of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, discussed brain-healthy lifestyle choices associated with lower risk for dementia. Small was author of the study ‘Your Brain on Google,’[1] which featured in a PBS Frontline documentary that aired the night before the talk, and which
Before the Keynote speakers took the stage, enlivened debate had begun in the pre-conference sessions, ahead of the official conference kickoff. Michael Liebman, PhD, Managing Director of Strategic Medicine, Inc., chaired one of 12 pre-conference ‘short courses’ on February 2, which provided three perspectives on clinical decision support in the management of patients with breast cancer. In breast cancer, tissue heterogeneity and the co-occurrence of subpathologies contribute to the complicated clinical picture. Clinical and histopathological factors, including lymph node status, tumor size, his
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