AI-Enabled Drug Discovery and Development

Pharmaceutical companies are undergoing a digital transformation. By experimenting with new initiatives, they are positioned to play a role in the revolution of healthcare. This transformation is driven by data from internal and external sources, including both -omic data and that from digital devices. Bio-IT World WEST, part of Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference, brings together all the stakeholders involved in this transformation.

Bio-IT World WEST is excited to return to San Francisco in 2020 with an expanded educational and networking program that promises to build on the success of our Boston-based 19th Annual Bio-IT World Conference & Expo. For the past 19 years, Bio-IT World Conference & Expo has established itself as a premier event focused on the innovative IT and informatics applications and enabling technologies that are driving the future of precision medicine. Bio-IT World Conference & Expo highlights the new frontiers in drug discovery & development, biomedical research, and clinical and healthcare initiatives made possible by these cutting-edge technologies. Join us at Bio-IT World WEST with an entirely new audience as we explore the Digitization of Pharma R&D, AI-Enabled Drug Discovery and Development, Emerging Technologies for Life Sciences, and Software Tools, Services, and Applications.

Final Agenda

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Sunday, March 1

2:00 - 5:00 pm Afternoon Short Courses*

*Separate registration required

5:30 - 8:30 Dinner Short Courses*

*Separate registration required

Monday, March 2

8:00 - 11:00 am Morning Short Courses*

*Separate registration required

10:30 Conference Program Registration Open

11:45 Organizer’s Opening Remarks

Cindy Crowninshield, RDN, LDN, HHC, Executive Event Director, Cambridge Healthtech Institute

11:50 Chairperson’s Remarks

Allison Proffitt, Editorial Director, Bio-IT World

11:55 Keynote Sponsor Introduction (Sponsorship Opportunity Available)

12:10 pm KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: The AI Bubble and the Emerging Thinking Economy

Pietro Michelucci, PhD, Director, Human Computation Institute

12:40 KEYNOTE PANEL DISCUSSION: Data Quality in Human Computation Systems

Moderator: Allison Proffitt, Editorial Director, Bio-IT World

Panelists: Jennifer Couch, PhD, Chief, Structural Biology and Molecular Applications Branch, Division of Cancer Biology and Citizen Science Coordinator, National Cancer Institute

Devin Krotman, Director, Global Learning XPRIZE and IBM Watson AI XPRIZE

Vani Mandava, Director, Data Science Outreach, Microsoft Research

Pietro Michelucci, PhD, Director, Human Computation Institute

Ginger Tsueng, PhD, Scientific Outreach Project Manager, Department of Integrative, Structural and Computational Biology, The Scripps Research Institute

1:30 Bio-IT World WEST Luncheon Presentation (Sponsorship Opportunity Available) or Enjoy Lunch on Your Own

2:05 Session Break

2:20 Chairperson’s Remarks

Michael D. Miller, Head of Science Infrastructure, Roche

2:25 AI and Computer-Aided Drug Discovery: the Hype, the Myth, the Legend

José Duca, PhD, Global Head, Computer-Aided Drug Discovery, Novartis

2:55 PANEL DISCUSSION: AI in Genomics and Precision Medicine

The AI-Enabled Drug Discovery and Development conference assembles thought leaders who will discuss Genomics and Precision Medicine, taking data from multiple -omics sources, imaging, and lifestyle data and aligning it with clinical action. These can then be turned into clinical recommendations for disease prevention, prognosis, diagnostics, and therapeutics. Machine learning gives us the power to extract elusive indicators from the ever-increasing volume of heath information. This information also gives us the power to make patient clusters, well beyond single etiology or prognostic indicators, and the panelists will present the promise and application of these multifactorial approaches toward curing or treating diseases and cancers.

Moderator: Ben Busby, PhD, Scientific Lead, NCBI Hackathons Program, Computational Biology Branch, NIH

Panelists: Jenny Smith, MSc, MEd, Research Bioinformatician, Clinical Research Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Lukasz Kidzinski, PhD, CTO, Saliency.ai, Researcher, Stanford University

Celeste Shelton, PhD, CGC, Clinical Variant Scientist & Genetic Counselor, Ariel Precision Medicine

3:55 Sponsored Presentation (Opportunity Available)

4:25 Refreshment Break and Transition to Plenary Keynote

PLENARY KEYNOTE SESSION

4:35 Welcome Remarks

Cindy Crowninshield, RDN, LDN, HHC, Executive Event Director, Cambridge Healthtech Institute

4:45 PLENARY KEYNOTE INTRODUCTION

Thomas Westerling-Bui, PhD, Senior Scientist, Regional Business Development, Aiforia

5:00 PLENARY KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: High-Performance Medicine

Eric Topol, MD, Founder and Director, Scripps Research Translational Institute (SRTI); Author, Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again

6:00 Grand Opening Reception in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing, Speed Networking, Book Signing, and Meetup Group

7:30 End of Day

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Tuesday, March 3

7:30 am Registration Open and Morning Coffee

8:00 Organizer’s Remarks

Cindy Crowninshield, RDN, LDN, HHC, Executive Event Director, Cambridge Healthtech Institute

8:05 Chairperson’s Remarks

Sudeep Basu, PhD, Practice Leader, TechVision-Innovation Services, Frost & Sullivan

8:10 Keynote Sponsor Introduction (Sponsorship Opportunity Available)

8:25 KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: AI and Big Data Strategies in Accelerating Clinical Research for Faster Rare Disease Cures

Harsha K. Rajasimha, MS, PhD, Founder, Jeeva Informatics Solutions, Inc.; Founder, Organization for Rare Diseases India–USA (ORDIUSA); Co-Director, Rare Diseases Systems Biology Initiative, George Mason University

8:55 KEYNOTE PANEL DISCUSSION: Applications of AI Technologies in Pharmaceuticals: Facilitating Development of Therapeutics in Treating Rare Diseases

Moderator: Sudeep Basu, PhD, Practice Leader, TechVision-Innovation Services, Frost & Sullivan

Panelists: Tom Defay, Senior Director, R&D Strategy and Alliances, SPMD, Strategy, Program Management and Data Sciences, Alexion

Annastasiah Mhaka, PhD, President, The Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare (AAIH)

Christina Waters, PhD, President, CEO and Founder, RARE Science, Inc.

Additional Panelists to be Announced

9:40 Refreshment Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing, Speed Networking, Book Signing, and Meetup Group

10:40 Chairperson’s Remarks

Keith L. Ligon, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Pathology, Harvard Medical School; Associate Pathologist and Neuropathologist, Pathology; Director, DFCI Center for Patient Derived Models, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

10:45 Translating Ten Trillion Points of Data into Diagnostics, Therapies and New Insights in Health and Disease

Atul Butte, MD, PhD, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Distinguished Professor; Director, Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute, University of California, San Francisco; Chief Data Scientist, University of California Health (UC Health)

We build and apply tools that convert trillions of points of molecular, clinical, and epidemiological data – measured by researchers and clinicians over the past decade and now commonly termed “big data” – into diagnostics, therapeutics, and new insights into disease. Dr. Butte, a computer scientist and pediatrician, will highlight his center’s recent work on integrating electronic health records data across the entire University of California, and how analytics on this “real world data” can lead to new evidence for drug efficacy, new savings from better medication choices, and new methods to teach intelligence – real and artificial – to more precisely practice medicine.

11:15 Using Networks to Decode Cancer Risk

John Quackenbush, PhD, Professor and Chair, Biostatistics, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health

Precision medicine is based on the idea that single mutations can inform our understanding of disease and response to therapy. But we know that cancer is multifactorial, with many genetic variants moderating disease and disease risk. By using network methods, we can better understand how and why cancer develops and assess disease risk.

11:45 Sponsored Presentation (Opportunity Available)

12:15 pm Session Break

12:20 LUNCHEON PRESENTATION I: A Modern Molecular LIMS Built for Precision Medicine

Nabil Hafez, MS, Senior Director, Product Management, Precision Medicine, Sunquest Information Systems

12:50 Luncheon Presentation II (Sponsorship Opportunity Available)

1:20 Refreshment Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing, Speed Networking, Book Signing, and Meetup Group

2:00 Breakout Discussions in the Exhibit Hall

3:00 Transition to Conference Programs

3:15 Chairperson’s Remarks

Pankaj Agarwal, Chief Computational Biologist, BioInfi

3:20 Strategies to Study Rare Diseases with “Big Data”

Jaclyn N. Taroni, PhD, Principal Data Scientist, Childhood Cancer Data Lab, Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation

We sometimes speak of “big data” in biology. In most cases, these data are wide, and have many more features than examples. This is particularly pronounced in the case of rare diseases, where we may have tens of samples but tens of thousands of measurements. I’ll discuss how we can use compendia of data with many training examples as a training dataset and then transfer the results of those analyses to rare disease datasets where the number of samples is particularly limited. I’ll also discuss how this feature of data, even outside of rare diseases, affects deep learning methods in this domain.

3:50 Investigation Using Machine Intelligence Methods

Shameer Khader, PhD, Senior Director, Advanced Analytics, Data Science and Bioinformatics, AstraZeneca

4:20 Sponsored Presentation (Opportunity Available)

4:50 Spring Fling Celebration in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing, Speed Networking, Book Signing, and Meetup Group

6:00 End of Day

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6:30 - 9:30 Dinner Short Courses*

*Separate registration required

Wednesday, March 4

6:45 am Registration Open

7:00 BREAKFAST PANEL DISCUSSION: The Time is NOW: Creating Meaningful Change for Women in the Workplace (Sponsorship Opportunity Available)

Moderator: Robin Toft, Author of WE CAN, The Executive Woman’s Guide to Career Advancement; Founder and Chairman, Toft Group Executive Search

8:00 Organizer’s Remarks

Edel O’Regan, PhD, Vice President, Production, Cambridge Healthtech Institute

8:05 Chairperson’s Remarks

Joseph Ferrara, CEO, Boston Healthcare

8:10 Keynote Sponsor Introduction (Sponsorship Opportunity Available)

8:25 KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: The Value and Application of Informatics in Cancer Care Delivery

Debra A. Patt, MD, Vice President, Public Policy & Academic Affairs, Medical

Oncologist, Texas Oncology Cancer Center & Editor in Chief, Journal of Clinical Oncology-Clinical Cancer Informatics

8:55 KEYNOTE PANEL DISCUSSION: Pragmatic Use of Informatics in Cancer Care Delivery and Cancer Research: Big Data and AI Take on Cancer

Moderator: Joseph Ferrara, CEO, Boston Healthcare

Panelists: Mark Hulse, Chief Digital Officer, City of Hope

Debra A. Patt, MD, Vice President, Public Policy & Academic Affairs, Medical Oncologist, Texas Oncology Cancer Center & Editor in Chief, Journal of Clinical Oncology-Clinical Cancer Informatics

Nicholas Schork, PhD, Deputy Director of Quantitative Sciences, Distinguished Professor of Quantitative Medicine, The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen)

Robert P. Sebra, PhD, Associate Professor, Director of Technology Development & Genomics Core Facility, Icahn Institute, Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai

Ajay Shah, PhD, Executive Director & Head of IT for Translational Medicine, Bristol-Myers Squibb

Paul A. Rejto, PhD, Vice President, Head of Translational Research, Pfizer Oncology R&D

9:40 Refreshment Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing, Speed Networking, Book Signing, and Meetup Group

10:40 Chairperson’s Remarks

Kristen Fortney, PhD, CEO, BIOAGE

10:45 Data Science for Translational Research in Pharmaceutical Industry

Zhaoshi Jiang, PhD, Executive Director of Bioinformatics & Clinical Data Sciences, Gilead Sciences

The pharmaceutical industry is facing unprecedented challenges with its current R&D models. The key issue of the industry is the low successful rate of translational research. We would like to share our experience on leverage “omics data” to better support the translational research at Gilead.

11:15 Leveraging AI, ‘-Omics,’ and Biobanks to Extend Human Lifespan and Healthspan

Kristen Fortney, PhD, CEO, BIOAGE

‘-Omics’ data enables us to study aging directly in humans, rather than less translationally relevant model systems. At BIOAGE we focus on ‘-omic’ phenotyping of human aging cohorts that have healthy blood samples tied to decades of follow-up EHRs that include rich healthspan and mortality outcomes. We integrate multiple data modalities for data-driven discovery of key aging targets.

11:45 On the Road to Genetically Validated Targets in Kidney Diseases: Computational Challenges

Thomas Tibbitts, PhD, Senior Vice President, Computational Discovery, Goldfinch Bio

Focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) is scarring of the kidney that can lead to kidney failure. To discover genetic variants associated with FSGS, we built the Kidney Genome Atlas (KGA 1.0), which contains whole genomes (>30X) on 23000 individuals, including 2000 cases of FSGS and other proteinuric disorders. To efficiently process and analyze this large amount of genomic data we have implemented infrastructure and pipelines on AWS and launched a web portal to facilitate target discovery.

12:15 pm Sponsored Presentation (Opportunity Available)

12:45 Session Break

12:50 Bio-IT World WEST Luncheon Presentation (Sponsorship Opportunity Available) or Enjoy Lunch on Your Own

1:20 Refreshment Break in the Exhibit Hall with Last Chance Poster Viewing, Speed Networking, Book Signing, and Meetup Group

2:00 Chairperson’s Remarks

Zhaoshi Jiang, PhD, Executive Director of Bioinformatics & Clinical Data Sciences, Gilead Sciences

2:05 Fake It ‘til You Make It (Reproducible): Synthetic Data Resources for Genomics

Geraldine A. Van der Auwera, PhD, Director of Outreach and Communications, Data Sciences Platform, Broad Institute

The computational reproducibility of published biomedical research is limited by data access restrictions, affecting not just researchers who wish to reuse published analysis code, but also tool developers and educators who lack suitable example data for testing and training. We present: 1) a prototype pipeline that wraps established open-source data simulation tools to generate publicly shareable synthetic sequence data at any scale; and 2) a plan to develop community resources.

2:35 Progress in Diagnosing Rare Disease Patients Leveraging NLP and Genomic Sequencing

Tom Defay, Senior Director, R&D Strategy and Alliances, SPMD, Strategy, Program Management and Data Sciences, Alexion

Diagnosing patients with rare disease is challenging. Whole exome and whole genome sequencing have improved our diagnostic abilities but can still fall short due to our lack of understanding of which mutations are most likely to be the cause of disease. By combining phenotypic information automatically extracted from the patient’s EMR with a patient’s genome sequence, we have developed a system for prioritizing which mutations may be most significant and proposing possible diagnoses. Advances on this approach will be discussed.

3:05 Drug Targets with Genomic Support

J. Wade Davis, PhD, ACOS Research Fellow, Director, Computational Genomics, Genomics Research Center (GRC), AbbVie

3:35 Close of Conference

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