2022 Precision Medicine World Conference Back In Person, Features Extensive UCSF Presence

For the seventh consecutive year, UC San Francisco is co-sponsoring the Precision Medicine World Conference (PMWC) on June 28-30, 2022, to share the latest in this rapidly evolving space.

The conference will be held in person after being virtual for the past two years due to the pandemic and will feature 28 UCSF experts who will speak about their work, including how they are tackling COVID-19.

UCSF’s Charles Chiu, MD, PhD, and Bob Wachter, MD, have played pivotal roles early on in the pandemic and as new variants have emerged. Chiu, professor of Laboratory Medicine and Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, has focused on running molecular tests on the virus and discovered the nation’s first case of the Omicron variant by producing a genomic sequence to confirm it. Chiu is chairing PMWC’s SARS-CoV2 Outbreak Surveillance panel.

Wachter is the chair of the Department of Medicine at UCSF and has been tweeting about COVID-19 for more than two years, sharing regular updates with his perspective on the state of the pandemic in San Francisco and worldwide. His tweets on COVID-19 continue to serve as a trusted source of information on the clinical, public health, and policy issues surrounding the pandemic. Wachter will speak in the panel on “Past, Present, Future – How will We Manage the Next Pandemic?”

Chiu and Wachter are among 400 recognized authorities and experts who will share their latest findings across research, health care, data, pharma and biotechnology sectors. The forum is expected to draw an audience of more than 2,500 from around the world as a way to foster collaboration, expand the practice and realize the promise of precision medicine.

Some of the tracks this year include advancements in immunotherapy, drug discovery data sciences and clinical trial design. Additional tracks focus on topics ranging from clinical diagnostics, AI and data science, clinical research and tools, health monitoring and genomic profiling. These sessions showcase a novel product or service, late-breaking research data or an innovative project.

This year, the PMWC Pioneer Award will go to UCSF’s Jennifer Puck, MD, professor and pediatric immunologist, who developed a newborn screening test for severe combined immunodeficiency. This award is given to a venerable individual whose foresight and groundbreaking contributions to precision medicine propelled the movement in earlier years.

Driving Precision Medicine

Advancing precision medicine continues to be a priority at UCSF and is central to its advancing health worldwide mission. UCSF faculty lead numerous efforts at the local, state and national levels to use data-driven tools and analysis to develop new diagnostics, therapies, prevention measures and insights into disease. The goal is to make progress in both personal and population health.

UCSF will take the helm in exploring how real-world data (RWD) and real-world evidence (RWE) are playing an increasing role in health care decisions and ultimately informing more precise delivery of care to individuals. The FDA defines real-world data as “the data relating to patient health status and/or the delivery of health care routinely collected from a variety of sources,” whereas real-world evidence is the clinical evidence derived from analysis of RWD. Sources of RWD may include electronic health records (EHRs), claims and billing activities, product and disease registries, patient-generated data including in home-use settings, and data gathered from other sources that can inform on health status, such as mobile devices.

Among the highlights of UCSF’s presence at the Real World Evidence track:

• Veteran presenter at the conference Atul Butte, MD, PhD, director of the UCSF Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute (BCHSI) and Chief Data Scientist for the UC Health system, will lead a panel on “Realizing the Promise of Precision-Medicine using Real-world Evidence.”
• Vivek Rudrapatna, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine, Ida Sim, MD, PhD, professor of medicine and director of the new UCSF-UC Berkeley Joint Program in Computational Precision Health, and Julian Hong, MD, medical director of Radiation Oncology Informatics, will speak on “Opportunities and Challenges with Real World Data” as part of the Real-World Evidence track. Rudrapatna also co-directs the new Center for Real World Evidence at UCSF.
• Keith Yamamoto, PhD, vice chancellor for Science Policy and Strategy and director of UCSF Precision Medicine, continues to lift precision medicine onto the national agenda. Yamamoto, who is part of the executive planning committee of the conference, will speak on the “UC Precision Medicine Programs: Achievements and Challenges” panel.

Other topics presented by UCSF faculty and staff:

• “Data Sharing Application: Needs, Advancements, and Challenges” with Russ Cucina, MD, MS
• “Next-Generation Data Sharing and Technical Advancements in Clinical Machine Learning – What’s New?” with Sharmila Majumdar, PhD, AI in Medical Imaging track chair
• “Reproductive Health; Precision Metrics and Pregnancy Health: Insights from the Pandemic” with Laura Jelliffe-Pawlowski, PhD, MS