Dan Tel Aviv Hotel, Tel Aviv, Israel | May 23-25, 2022
Stanford School of Medicine, CA, USA
Salk Institute, CA, USA
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, PA, USA
Ami S. Bhatt is an Assistant Professor of Medicine & Genetics, divisions of Hematology and BMT at Stanford University. She received her MD and Ph.D. (Biochemistry & Molecular Biology) at UCSF, where she received the Fineberg Award for Excellence in Teaching and was inducted into Alpha Omega Alpha.
She completed residency and chief residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and was a fellow in Hematology/Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Thereafter, she carried out her post-doctoral studies at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.
Ami’s lab seeks to improve outcomes in patients with hematological malignancies by exhaustively characterizing the dynamics of the microbiome in immunocompromised individuals, and exploring how changes in the microbiome are associated with idiopathic diseases in this population. She loves working with trainees and is excited about the application of new molecular and computational technologies to solve complicated metagenomic puzzles. Learning how to organize piles of shotgun metagenomic sequencing data into orderly lists of genomes and genes of potential clinical/biological importance is her passion.
In addition to her academic efforts, Ami is committed to improving cancer care, education and research in resource-limited settings. She is the Director of Global Oncology for the Center for Innovation in Global Health at Stanford University and has served as a visiting lecturer at the Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland and the University of Botswana. She, along with Franklin Huang, is a co-founder and co-president of the non-profit organization Global Oncology (www.globaonc.org).
Michael Snyder is the Stanford Ascherman Professor and Chair of Genetics and the Director of the Center of Genomics and Personalized Medicine. Dr. Snyder received his Ph.D. training at the California Institute of Technology and carried out postdoctoral training at Stanford University. He is a leader in the field of functional genomics and multiomics, and one of the major participants of the ENCODE project. His laboratory study was the first to perform a large-scale functional genomics project in any organism, and has developed many technologies in genomics and proteomics. These including the development of proteome chips, high resolution tiling arrays for the entire human genome, methods for global mapping of transcription factor (TF) binding sites (ChIP-chip now replaced by ChIP-seq), paired end sequencing for mapping of structural variation in eukaryotes, de novo genome sequencing of genomes using high throughput technologies and RNA-Seq. These technologies have been used for characterizing genomes, proteomes and regulatory networks. Seminal findings from the Snyder laboratory include the discovery that much more of the human genome is transcribed and contains regulatory information than was previously appreciated (e.g. lncRNAs and TF binding sites), and a high diversity of transcription factor binding occurs both between and within species. He launched the field of personalized medicine by combining different state-of–the-art “omics” technologies to perform the first longitudinal detailed integrative personal omics profile (iPOP) of a person, and his laboratory pioneered the use of wearables technologies (smart watches and continuous glucose monitoring) for precision health. He is a cofounder of many biotechnology companies, including Personalis, SensOmics, Qbio, January, Protos, Oralome, Mirvie and Filtricine.
More than 35 years ago, Dr. Wallace and his colleagues founded the field of human mitochondrial genetics. The mitochondria are the cellular power plants, organelles that generate most of the cell’s energy. The mitochondria also contain their own DNA, the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which encodes the wiring diagram for the cell’s power plants. Dr. Wallace showed that the mtDNA is inherited exclusively from the mother and that genetic alterations in the mtDNA can result is a wide range of metabolic and degenerative diseases as well as being important in cancer and aging.
One of his seminal contributions has been to use mtDNA variation to reconstruct the origin and ancient migrations of women. These studies revealed that humans arose in Africa approximately 200,000 years ago, that women left Africa about 65,000 years ago to colonize Eurasia, and from Siberia, they crossed the Bering land bridge to populate the Americas. Studies on the paternally-inherited Y chromosome showed that men went along too.
Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Department of Biology, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa,Israel
Stanford University, USA
Tel Aviv University, Israel
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Technion, Israel
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Bar Ilan University, Israel
KAIST, South Korea
TASMC & Tel Aviv University, Israel
University of California San Francisco, USA
Jackson Laboratory, MN, USA
Max Delbrueck Centre for Molecular Medicine, Berlin, DE
Alike.Health, Israel
Ono College & Tel Aviv University, Israel
PRECISE, Singapore
University of Cape Town, South Africa
Mines ParisTech, France
Born on Kibbutz Hatzor, earned his PhD in biological regulation at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2007. For four years, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, before joining the Weizmann Institute in 2011.
Ido Amit is a Professor at the Immunology Department at the Weizmann Institute of Science. His lab pioneered single cell genomic technologies and their application to characterize the immune system. Amit’s research answers some of the most fundamental questions in immunology which are being translated into innovate new targets for immunotherapy in autoimmune diseases, neurodegeneration and cancer. Prof. Amit is also known in the science community as a leader in the field of immunogenomics, aimed at detecting and engineering genome sequences that are essential for the function of the immune system in physiology and disease. Among others, Prof, Amit is a recipient of the EMBO Gold Medal award and an HHMI International Research Scholar for his work to reveal the function of the immune system.
Assaf C. Bester Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
bestera@technion.ac.il
https://besterlab.net.technion.ac.il
Department of Biology, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, 3200003, Israel.
Education/ Resume:
INSTITUTION AND LOCATION
DEGREE (if applicable)
END DATE MM/YYYY
FIELD OF STUDY
The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
BS
10/2003
Biology
MS
10/2005
Genetics
PhD
10/2012
Human Genetics
Postdoc
02/2014
Harvard Medical School, Boston, US
02/2019
Research Summary
The function of 98 percent of the human genome is poorly understood, and it is known as the dark matter of the genome. The unknown genome limits our ability to understand, diagnose, and treat complex genetic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer's. Studying the dark matter of the genome allows for better precision medicine and therapeutic approaches based on the unique genetics of the patient, resulting in improved and more effective treatments. In our lab, we are developing platforms that enable us to study, in parallel, thousands of genomic elements in micro-experiments via functional screening. Our studies focus on the function of the non-coding genome in blood cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Our recent study identified novel genes located in the dark matter of the genome that play a critical role in cancer. By applying genetic tools such as gene editing (CRISPR) and robotic platforms, we are able to study these new genes with the aim to develop innovative diagnostic and therapeutic tools to treat cancer in a much more effective and specific manner that is currently available.
Awards:
2014
EMBO Long-Term Fellowship, EMBO
2013
Fulbright Scholar award, Fulbright award of the United States-Israel Educational Foundation (USIEF).
Recent Publications:
Jin Billy Li, PhD, is associate professor of genetics at Stanford University. He received his bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University in Beijing and PhD from Washington University in St. Louis. After postdoctoral training with Professor George Church at Harvard Medical School, he started his laboratory at Stanford in 2010. In his own lab, he has focused on studying RNA editing mediated by ADAR enzymes. His laboratory has made major contributions to identifying and mapping RNA editing systems and studying their regulation and function.
His current work focuses on two aspects of ADAR RNA editing. One is exploring ADAR’s major biological function: evading the detection of double-strand RNA to suppress autoimmunity, which holds great potential for treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases. The other is to harness the endogenous ADAR enzyme for engineering RNAs, which holds great potential for the development of RNA-based therapeutics for both rare and common diseases.
Ayelet Erez is an M.D.-Ph.D. physician-scientist who combines clinical and basic research knowledge to improve healthcare for challenging diseases such as cancer. Ayelet studied medicine at the Technion Institute in Haifa. Following her Paediatric Residency at the Sheba Medical Center, she completed a Ph.D. in Cancer Genetics at Tel Aviv University under the mentorship of Prof. Shai Izraeli. Ayelet then went to the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, where she combined training in clinical genetics and a postdoctoral fellowship, focusing on the metabolism of human diseases in Prof. Brendan Lee’s lab. Ayelet returned to Israel in 2012 to the Weizmann Institute of Science, where she is currently an Associate Professor. In parallel, Ayelet helped establish an onco-genetic clinic at Schneider Children’s Medical Center, where she volunteers to see pediatric patients with a suspected genetic predisposition to cancer. Ayelet’s research focuses on cancer metabolism through the prism of changes in amino acid homeostasis for translational relevance. Her work has been recognized by publications in high-impact journals, invitations to major conferences in the field of cancer metabolism, and multiple prizes and awards.
Principal investigator, The Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Israel.
The lab is focused on understanding how gene expression programs are regulated in specialized cells, rapidly remodeled in response to hormones and go awry during breast carcinogenesis. Combining genomic measurements of regulatory elements activity, binding of sequence-specific transcription factors and the intricate three dimensional (3D) cross-talk between distant enhancers and genes, enabled identifying key transcription factors and understanding how their combinations in 1D and 3D determine the transcriptional output.
Young Seok Ju, M.D., Ph. D. is Assistant Professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, South Korea. He graduated from Seoul National University College of Medicine (Seoul, Korea) and conducted post-doctoral research at Wellcome Sanger Institute (Cambridge, UK).
Prof. Batsheva Kerem received her B.S.c in Biology with distinction from the Hebrew University (1979) and her Ph.D. (1986). Her postdoctoral training was undertaken at the
Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada. In 1990, she returned to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as a senior lecturer and as an associate professor (1998). From 2003, she was appointed full professor.
At the Hebrew University, Prof. Kerem established and chaired the National Genomic Knowledge Center at the Institute of Life Sciences (1997-2014), she served as the Head of Department of Genetics (2004-2006) and as the Head of the Authority for research students (from 2007-2011). In the last 7 years, Prof. Kerem is the university’s president advisor for promotion of women in science.
Prof. Kerem received numerous prizes, including the Joels Senior Lectureship for Excellence in Science (1996), The Teva Prize for Excellence in Human Genome (1993), the Julodan Prize for Contribution to Medicine (1993). Prof. Kerem was granted the Abisch-Frenkel Prize for Excellence in Life Sciences in 2003 and lastly, she was granted the Emet Prize in 2008.
Prof. Kerem is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). She serves on the editorial board of the European Journal of Human Genetics and EMBO Reports Journal and is a member of the European Research Council (ERC) for advanced scientists.
Prof. Kerem has published over 135 papers.
Pui-Yan Kwok is a Henry Bachrach Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Kwok’s research focuses on the development of new approaches to whole-genome analysis and their application to gene mapping and haplotyping.Dr. Kwok pioneered the high-throughput discovery of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across the human genome and was a member of the International HapMap Consortium Steering Committee. The inventor of several fluorescence-based SNP genotyping methods, Dr. Kwok has recently been developing mapping and haplotyping methods based on microscopic analysis of single DNA molecules. Dr. Kwok received PhD and MD degrees from the University of Chicago and was a postdoctoral fellow at Washington University. Dr. Kwok has authored over 110 publications and holds three patents.
Jackson Laboratory Professor, President Emeritus, and Honorary Fellow Edison Liu, M.D., focuses on the functional genomics of human cancers, particularly breast cancer, uncovering new oncogenes, and deciphering on a genomic scale the dynamics of gene regulation that modulate cancer biology.
From 2011 to 2021, Dr. Liu was the president and CEO of The Jackson Laboratory, an independent research institute focused on complex genetics and functional genomics. During his tenure, JAX grew significantly in revenue, employee headcount, international presence, research scope, philanthropy and physical footprint. Under Liu’s leadership, JAX established The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine in Farmington, Conn., and added production facilities in Ellsworth, Maine and Japan and established a joint venture in China to the institution’s headquarters campus in Bar Harbor, Maine, and production facility in Sacramento, Calif.
Previously, he was the founding executive director of the Genome Institute of Singapore and the president of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO). He was also the scientific director of the National Cancer Institute's Division of Clinical Sciences in Bethesda, Md., where he was in charge of the intramural clinical translational science programs. In his earlier career, Dr. Liu was a faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was the director of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center's Specialized Program of Research Excellence in Breast Cancer; the director of the Laboratory of Molecular Epidemiology at UNC's School of Public Health; and the Chief of Medical Genetics.
Dr. Liu is an international expert in cancer biology, systems genomics, human genetics, molecular epidemiology and translational medicine. He has authored more than 320 scientific papers and reviews and co-authored two books. He obtained his B.S. in chemistry and psychology, as well as his M.D., at Stanford University. He then received his residency and fellowship training at Washington University, St, Louis, and Stanford, and postdoctoral training in molecular oncology at the University of California at San Francisco.
Throughout his career Dr. Liu has received numerous accolades and awards, including the AACR Rosenthal Award and the Brinker International Award, both for breast cancer research; the Public Service Medal from the President of Singapore for his contributions to resolving the SARS crisis; and the Chen Award for Distinguished Academic Achievement in Human Genetics. He was elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation, as President of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO), as a foreign member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, and as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He holds honorary degrees from Queen’s University (Belfast, Northern Ireland), University of Southern Maine, and Colby College (Waterville, Maine).
Yaara completed her BSc and PhD at Tel Aviv University, where she studied regulatory evolution of bacterial pathogens under the supervision of Prof. Tal Pupko and Prof. Eliora Ron. She then became a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute and Harvard Medical School, where she studied cancer persister cells with Prof. Joan Brugge and Prof. Aviv Regev. Her research focuses on the identification and characterization of mechanisms of non-genetic drug resistance in cancer and what they can teach about of non-Darwinian evolution.
Dan Peer is a Professor and the Director of the Laboratory of Precision NanoMedicine at Tel Aviv University (TAU). He is also the Vice President for Research and Development at Tel Aviv University. From 2016 - 2020, he was the Chair of Tel Aviv University Cancer Biology Research Center that includes 17 affiliated hospitals and from 2017 - Present, he is the Founding and Managing Director of the SPARK program of Translational Medicine at TAU. Prof. Peer is also the Chairman of Ramot, TAU Tech Transfer Company and Chairman of TAU Ventures, the Venture arm of TAU.
Prof. Peer’s work was among the first to demonstrate systemic delivery of RNA molecules using targeted nanocarriers to the immune system and he pioneered the use of RNA interference (RNAi) in immune cells. In addition, his lab was the first to show systemic, cell specific delivery of modified mRNA to cells to induce therapeutic gene expression of desired proteins within the immune system that has enormous implications in cancer, inflammation and infection diseases (e.g. COVID 19 mRNA vaccines). In addition, his lab was the first to show high efficiency, systemic, cell specific therapeutic genome editing in cancer.
Prof. Peer has more than 130 pending and granted patents. Some of them have been licensed to several pharmaceutical companies and one is currently under registration (as a new biological drug in Inflammatory Bowel Disease). In addition, based on his work, five spin-off companies were generated aiming to bring innovative personalized medicine into clinical practice.
Prof. Peer received more than 30 awards and honors and he serves on the scientific advisory board of more than 15 companies, and on the editorial board of more than 20 journals. He is also an Associate Editor of the Journal of Controlled Release. Prof. Peer is a past President of the Israeli Chapter of the Controlled Release Society, and a Past Member of the Board of the Israel Young Academy.
Prof. Varda Shalev (MD, MPH) has completed her residency in family medicine and earned an MPA in Public Health Administration at Clark University. After a two year fellowship in medical informatics at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital, Prof. Shalev established the Department of Medical Informatics at Maccabi and was responsible for planning and developing its computerized medical systems. She has pioneered the development of multiple disease registries to support chronic disease management.
Prof. Shalev has also served as the director of primary care division in Maccabi. Altogether, she has authored or coauthored over 031 publications in peer-reviewed journals.
Dr. Gil Siegal’s scholarly interests cover the expanding spectrum of modern health law and bioethics including medical malpractice, genetics and biotechnology, public health law, organ transplantation and telemedicine.
Siegal is director of the Center for Health Law and Bioethics at Kiryat Ono College in Israel and a senior researcher at the Gertner Institute for Health Policy. He is chief editor of The Journal of Health Law & Bioethics [Heb].
Siegal serves on several national committees in Israel, including the Israeli National Committee for Medical Research, the Israeli National Committee on Human Genetic Research and the Israeli National Committee on Non-Medical Sex Selection. He is chairperson of the Israeli National Forum for Legal and Ethical Aspect of Genetics.
During 2003-04, Siegal was a fellow in health policy and ethics at UVA School of Law, where he also taught Comparative Health Law. During 2004-05, he served as a fellow in medical ethics at Harvard University Medical School, and a research fellow and consultant at Harvard School of Public Health, working on demonstration projects of administrative compensation for medical injuries (with Michelle Mello and David Studdert). He also previously served as a professor at UVA Law.
He has taught at the following law and medical schools: Haifa University, Manchester University, Tel Aviv University, Bar Ilan University and Hebrew University.
Dr. Viviane Slon is a senior lecturer in the Departments of Anatomy and Anthropology and Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University (Israel), and is affiliated with the Dan David Center for Human Evolution and Biohistory Research, where she is the head of the ancient DNA laboratory. Her PhD and post-doctoral research were conducted in the Department of Evolutionary Genetics of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig, Germany). She has an MSc in Medical Sciences and a BSc in Medical and Life Sciences, both from Tel Aviv University. For her work on ancient DNA, Dr. Slon has been awarded the Dan David Prize Scholarship for Young Researchers (2017), the Otto Hahn Medal (2018), the Alon Fellowship (2020), and the Rosalind Franklin Young Investigator Award (2022).
Prof. Patrick Tan is the Executive Director (ED) of PRECISE and will oversee the implementation of Phase II of Singapore’s National Precision Medicine Strategy, which aims to transform healthcare in Singapore, and improve patient outcomes through new insights into the Asian genome and data-driven healthcare solutions. During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Prof Tan was Programme Director of Operation Stronghold, establishing one of Singapore’s largest COVID-19 testing facilities through a joint effort involving A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research), National University Health System, and Temasek Holdings. Prof Tan is also Executive Director of the Genome Institute of Singapore and Professor at the Duke-NUS Medical School. He received his B.A. (summa cum laude) from Harvard University and MD PhD degree from Stanford University, where he received the Charles Yanofsky prize for Most Outstanding Graduate Thesis in Physics, Biology or Chemistry. Other awards include the President’s Scholarship, Loke Cheng Kim Scholarship, Young Scientist Award (A*STAR), Singapore Youth Award, Chen New Investigator Award (Human Genome Organisation), President’s Science Award, and the Japanese Cancer Association International Award. In 2018, he received the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Team Science Award as Team Leader, representing the first time a team from Asia has received the award. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), the Bioethics Advisory Committee (BAC), a Board Member of the International Gastric Cancer Association, and on the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science
Nicki started her research career in molecular genetics the University of Cape Town, followed by a Ph D in Molecular Oncology at the University of London and a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular endocrinology research at UCSF. She conducted laboratory-based research into molecular genetics underpinning paediatric cancers of muscle (Rhabdomyosarcoma) and kidney (Wilm’s Tumour). She then transitioned into the field of medical genomics and bioinformatics, and until 2015 ran a research group at the South African National Bioinformatics Institute at the University of the Western Cape, which focused on computational approaches to disease gene identification, and the genetic basis of disease in African populations. During this time her research group developed computational approaches to prioritising good candidate aetiological genes from the output of genome-wide analyses; as well as undertaking exome sequencing projects to identify rare aetiological variants in families with inherited diseases. During this time Nicki also addressed ethical issues relating to genome studies undertaken in African populations. She has completed a Masters in Public Health, specialising in epidemiology, and joined CIDER at the School of Public Health and Family Medicine working on secondment to the Western Cape Government Health Department with Andrew Boulle’s group to assist with developing the Provincial Health Data Centre. This has involved developing infrastructure, processes and governance structures for integrating clinical informatics and medical records into a health information exchange. In 2018, Nicki returned to full-time research on the Data Integration Platform of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Africa (CIDRI-Africa) and build a new research group within the Department of Integrative Biomedical Sciences at the University of Cape Town, focusing on the development of a cohort of African participants with genomic data linked to electronic health data, to address the aetiology of diseases in African populations.
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