Title:Molecular medicine: a new paradigm of accelerating marketization of drug development and image - guided therapy
Speaker:Tianci Wang,Stephen Wong, PhD, PE ,
Time:July. 13. 2011.9:30-11:30AM
Venue: Room A101 At WNLO
Abstract:
Successful mapping of the human genome is a significant scientific landmark in the beginning of the new millennium. With it comes the realization that the era of molecular medicine is upon us. This talk introduces new paradigms of molecular medicine for faster-to-market drug development and molecular image-guided intervention, and our group’s efforts of translating them into practical and cost-effective technology for disease management. The first part of the talk describes a faster and cheaper way to find or reposition drugs using systems biology modeling and high throughput biotechnologies. Drug development today is burdened with inefficiency and costs. Currently it takes about 10-17 years and over a billion dollar to develop a new drug. This lecture discusses how to discover therapeutic agents and systems biology strategies that target cancer and tumor relapse. To achieve faster translational impact, our strategy is to reposition known drugs to inhibit the self-renew of cancer stem cells (CSCs) or tumor initiating cells (TICs). Hypotheses can be rapidly generated in our modeling framework and validated with high throughput technologies.The second part covers another revolution of molecular medicine in the surgical intervention. The development of image guided therapy (IGT), started about three decades ago, aims to improve the efficacy of minimally invasive procedures and to reduce morbidity by providing pre-operative and direct intra-operative image based information. Since then IGT has been integrating multimodality imaging, robotics, and image processing and visualization but the principle of operation largely relying upon morphologic information. Here we present a new approach that ties functional genomics and molecular imaging together, and integrate macroscopic medical imaging with microscopic molecular imaging, especially label free biophotonics techniques, in detecting and visualizing disease state at molecular and cellular levels in vivo, leading to a new way to design and implement molecular image-guided therapy systems beyond incremental improvement of surgical procedures and achieve early detection and personalized medicine.
Biography:
Dr. Stephen TC Wong is the Founding Chairman for Department of Systems Medicine and Bioengineering, The Methodist Hospital Research Institute and Weill Cornell Medical College. He holds the John S. Dunn, Sr. Distinguished Endowed Chair in Biomedical Engineering; he is also a Professor of Radiology, Pathology, Laboratory Medicine, Neurology, and Neurosciences, the Director of Translational Research at Methodist Cancer Center, and Chief of Medical Physics and Chief Research Information Officer at The Methodist Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical College. In addition, he serves as the Founding Director of the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Center for BRAIN (Bioinformatics Research and Imaging in the Neurosciences) and Founding Director of the NCI Center for Modeling Cancer Development at The Methodist Hospital Research Institute. An internationally acclaimed imaging scientist and systems biologist, Dr. Stephen Wong has led teams that developed automation for the production of first inkjet printer and the first very large scale integration (VLSI) 1MB computer memory chip, the largest online brokerage trading system, and the first hospital-wide digital radiology image management system in US academic medical centers, used by hospitals and physicians throughout the world to electronically access patient image medical records. Before accepting his current position with Methodist, Dr. Wong held posts with the Harvard Center of Neurodegeneration and Repair at Harvard Medical School, where he established the Harvard-wide Center for Bioinformatics; Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he founded the Functional and Molecular Imaging Center. He has more than two decades of research experience in industry and hospitals, including Hewlett-Packard, AT&T Bell Laboratories, the Japanese Fifth Generation Computer Systems Project, Royal Philips Electronics, Charles Schwab, University of California - San Francisco School of Medicine, and Harvard Medical School. He received his senior executive education from the MIT Sloan School of Management, Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and Columbia University Graduate School of Business.
