Education

Cancer immunotherapy and a clinical trial dilemma

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There is a numbers problem, and a biomarker one as well. Annually the worldwide cancer drug market is on the order of $110 Billion, and individual immuno-oncology drugs cost the US healthcare system on the order of $100K to $150K per year. With such large financial incentives, there are currently over 900 existing clinical trials at clinicaltrials.gov … Read more

How will the public learn about genomics and Next Generation Sequencing?

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Image courtesy of {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ideonexus/"}Ryan Somma"{/a} via Flickr.

We’re on the verge of a new era in education. This week, the Smithsonian Museum announced a new genomics exhibit at the National History Museum, in conjunction with the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), and generous grants from several companies and institutions, including a major contribution from Life Technologies (on the order of $3M). The Museum of Natural History already has a nice website reviewing progress in genomics, but this is certainly a welcome development. To quote Eric Green, “It is not enough [for] researchers like me and others at NHGRI to be excited about the human genome and the opportunities before us… because genomic knowledge will become increasingly relevent it is all the more urgent for the public to understand and to appreciate the applications it has for society and for individuals and medical care.”

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Genia (nanopore sequencing company) presents at ABRF 2012

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Image courtesy of {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/botheredbybees/2389301870/"}BotheredByBees{/a} via Flickr

At ABRF last weekend (Association for Biomolecular Resource Facilities) not only was I able to attend George Church’s talk, but I also was able to hear Steven Roever talk about his new nanopore sequencing company, Genia, where he is CEO.

As George Church introduced him, he has an unusual background for a next-generation sequencing company – involved with encryption and Digital Rights Management in prior roles, he met Roger Chien, a Maxim semiconductor company Digital to Analog Conversion chip expert, while at a Sand Hill Road Starbucks, as Roger was reading a book about the origin of life. (I’m not sure exactly which book, but it could have been Freeman Dyson’s.) Maxim, by the way, is a 9500-strong, $2.5B revenue company.

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High School biology students and Genomics

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Santa Monica High School - ah the memories! (via {a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page"}Wikimedia Commons{/a})

Over the past few years I’ve been interested in contributing back to the community I live in, but as a busy father-of-three (ages 3 to 9) there just isn’t the ability to ‘cold-call’ a local high-school and volunteer.

That is, until a family vacation took us to Colonial Williamsburg VA and a tour of the Governor’s Mansion. There was a person there with a ‘Wootton Patriots’ T-shirt, and, well, as Newsweek indicated it was one of the country’s top 100 high schools in their 2010 ranking, I thought I’d speak up and ask if he happened to be involved with the local high school.

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