Mayo Clinic is a leader in moving important advancements in precision medicine from the laboratory into patient care, offering hope and healing. The Individualizing Medicine Conference: Advancing Care Through Genomics gives medical providers and scientists the opportunity to learn firsthand the newest ways genomic medicine is improving care for patients.

The Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine will host the conference beginning Oct. 9 in Rochester, Minnesota.

“Mayo has had a long tradition of sharing its knowledge dating back to the Mayo brothers, who invited other medical professionals to observe their latest surgical techniques. The same is true today. The conference allows us to share groundbreaking discoveries with other researchers and providers, with the goal of advancing an individualized approach to patient care,” says Timothy Curry, M.D., Ph.D., director, Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine Education Program.

Using genetic testing to guide patient care, the story so far

Keith Stewart, M.B., Ch.B., director, Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine, will open this year’s conference by sharing how genomic testing, which has become faster and cheaper, is being used to improve diagnosis and treatment for patients with many conditions – from heart disease and cancer to inherited diseases. According to Dr. Stewart, all patients can benefit from genetic testing and an individualized approach to care.

Conference Highlights

Pharmacogenomics – matching the right drug and dose based on genetics

• Manage pain more safely and effectively in light of the opioid crisis: Timothy Curry, M.D., Ph.D., will moderate an expert panel discussing how pharmacogenomics testing can help identify safer and more effective pain management medications for every individual – whether recovering from surgery or suffering from a chronic condition.
• Individualize therapies for quitting smoking: Can our genes provide clues to help us quit addictive habits such as smoking? Rachel Tyndale, Ph.D., professor of Pharmacology and Psychiatry, CAMH and University of Toronto, is asking that question and will share her groundbreaking research on how a person’s genetic makeup impacts addiction and drug response and how this information can be used to identify more individualized treatments for patients.
• How to incorporate pharmacogenomics into your medical practice: Mayo Clinic is a leader in bringing pharmacogenomics to patients. Pre-conference programs and breakout sessions will feature experts Richard Weinshilboum, M.D. and Liewei Wang, M.D., Ph.D., co-directors of the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine Pharmacogenomics Program, discussing how pharmacogenomics is critical to selecting the most effective, safest therapy for patients. They’ll also highlight Mayo’s innovative RIGHT study, which is pioneering the addition of pharmacogenomics data into the electronic health record, helping doctors’ access genetic information to guide treatment decisions.

NIH All of Us Research Program, part of Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI)  

With pilot studies already underway, Stephanie Devaney, Ph.D., deputy director, All of Us Research Program, will provide an update on this unprecedented study that is enrolling one million or more people into a research cohort to advance an individualized approach to managing health and disease. Mayo Clinic’s Biobank will store participants’ blood and biospecimens used in the research.

Personal Genomics: home DNA tests; DNA sequencing of all newborns and healthy people

• Robert Green, M.D., M.P.H., director, Genomes2People Research Program, and a medical geneticist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, will share his compelling research on how genetic testing can be used to promote overall wellness and prevent or manage disease. As co-director of the NIH-funded PGen Study, he has led one of the first studies exploring direct-to-consumer (at home) genetic testing services. He also leads the MedSeq and the BabySeq Projects that examines the use of genomic sequencing in patients who are healthy and those with hereditary disease.
• David Ledbetter, Ph.D., executive vice president and chief scientific officer, Geisinger Health System, will provide an update on the MyCode Community Health Initiative, an innovative research effort that has already enrolled 150,000 Geisinger patients. The project will leverage twenty years of electronic health information with DNA sequencing data for each participant  to find the best way to deliver cost-effective, precision medicine healthcare within a health system setting.

Progress in diagnosing rare diseases

William Gahl, M.D., Ph.D., clinical director, National Human Genome Research Institute, will discuss how genomic sequencing is being used to help the millions of people worldwide, who suffer from a rare disease — many of whom have searched for years to find answers after traditional testing fails to reveal a diagnosis or treatment. Dr. Gahl, head of the NIH Rare and Undiagnosed Diseases Program, will discuss how national and international collaboration is boosting the application of genomics to solve these cases.

How your microbiome – the community of bacteria in your gut – affects your health

Rob Knight, Ph.D., director, Center for Microbiome Innovation, University of California, San Diego and David Relman, M.D., the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor in Medicine, and Microbiology and Immunology, and co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, will discuss the latest discoveries of how the trillions of bacteria in your gut, known as the gut microbiome, support your overall health, and when imbalanced, can lead to disease. Their research findings in this growing field could lead to better diagnostic tests and individualized diets or treatments to help restore a healthy microbiome, preventing or managing many symptoms for conditions like irritable bowel disease, colon cancer, autism and rheumatoid arthritis.

Genetic links to inflammatory bowel disease

Judy Cho, M.D., director, Charles Bronfman Institutes for Personalized Medicine at Mount Sinai Health System in New York, will present her pioneering research uncovering how genetics, immune response and microbes increase the incidence of disease and how that information can be used to develop new treatments. Dr. Cho’s research is helping to reveal new treatment options for the many patients with inflammatory bowel diseases who do not respond to standard treatments and continue to suffer from debilitating symptoms.

Register to attend Individualizing Medicine 2017

There is still time to register and join us to learn more about bringing precision medicine into practice at Individualizing Medicine 2017: Advancing Care Through Genomics.

The Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine is hosting the sixth annual genomics conference October 9–10, in Rochester, Minnesota.

Explore all conference offerings:

• Register today: conference website.
• See the schedule.
• Review the list of speakers.
• Learn about pre-conference and post-conference sessions.
• Follow the latest news related to the conference on the Center for Individualized Medicine blog, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter at @MayoClinicCIM. Use hashtag #CIMCon17.

Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine is hosting the conference with support from the Jackson Family Foundation.

Tags: #CIMCon17, #Consumer genomics, #Dr. David Ledbetter, #Dr. David Relman, #Dr. Judy Cho, #Dr. Rachel Tyndale, #Dr. Rob Knight, #Dr. Robert Green, #Dr. Stephanie Devaney, #Dr. William Gahl, #genomic testing, #Home DNA tests, #Individualizing Medicine 2017, #inflammatory bowel disease, #medical resarch, #pain management, #rare genetic diseases, #smoking cessation, Advanced Cancer, cancer, center for individualized medicine, DNA Sequencing, Dr. Keith Stewart, Dr. Liewei Wang, Dr. Richard Weinshilboum, Dr. Timothy Curry, Genetic Testing, Genomic Sequencing, mayo clinic, microbiome, National Institutes of Health, pharmacogenomics, Precision Medicine