Clinical/Translational Science at the AAAS Annual Meeting

The Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS - the publishers of Science and Science Careers) kicks off this week, 18 February, in San Diego, and runs through 22 February. The conference includes an excellent career workshop program that's FREE to attend. (Free on-site registration required - details here.) And if you decide you want to check out the rest of the meeting, you can register on-site for full meeting attendance; there's a nicely discounted rate for students.

As part of the career program, CTSciNet and Science Careers will host a workshop on careers in clinical and translational research. Here are the details:

Getting Closer to the Clinic: Clinical and Translational Research Careers
Friday, February 19, 2010: 3:00 PM-4:30 PM
Marina Ballroom F (San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina)

Although an established training path for physician-scientists has existed for decades, the training and career path for Ph.D. scientists who want to take their research beyond the bench and towards the clinic is less clear. Supported by an existing grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, this workshop will address how to carve out a career in clinically relevant research, via formal training and informal means.

Our panel of distinguished guests includes:

• Eric Topol, M.D., Director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, Chief Academic Officer of Scripps Health, and Professor of Translational Genomics
• Vishal S. Vaidya, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Renal Division, Brigham and Women's Hospital
• Ajit P. Varki, M.D., Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Associate Dean for Physician-Scientist Training, Co-Director Glycobiology Research and Training Center, University of California San Diego School of Medicine

The workshop comes at the end of a whole day of seminars devoted to translational research. Here's the line-up (note that full meeting registration is required to attend these sessions):

The Road to Personalized Medicine
Friday, February 19, 2010: 8:30 AM-10:00 AM
Room 17B (San Diego Convention Center)
This session will provide insight into technological advancements spurring the discovery of new biomarkers in areas such as genes (i.e., pharmacogenetics, pharmacogenomics, and toxicogenomics), proteins (i.e., proteomics), and metabolites (i.e., metabolomics). Translational (animal to human and vice versa) approaches to biomarker identification and qualification for use will be presented. Experiences with human clinical trials that implement pharmacogenetic (gene variant) biomarkers of safety and efficacy will be described.

• Moderator: Donna L. Mendrick, U.S. Food and Drug Administration
• Speakers:
• Vishal S. Vaidya, Harvard Medical School - Bench to Bedside Detection of Kidney Toxicity
• Ivan Rusyn, University of North Carolina - Modeling Toxicity in the Population Using Experimental Models
• Dennis Vargo, Critical Path Institute - Using Genetic Information To Predict and Prevent Drug Toxicity

Evaluating and Funding Translational Research
Friday, February 19, 2010: 10:30 AM-12:00 PM
Room 17B (San Diego Convention Center)
A new breed of scientist, the clinician-researcher, has evolved to take on translational medicine challenges. To prevent barriers between clinical and basic research, increased further by the complexities of conducting interdisciplinary research, different funding mechanisms became available at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), such as the Clinical and Translational Science Awards, and at nonprofit organizations such as the Biomarkers Consortium and the C-Path Institute. This session focuses on the criteria for evaluating translational research and the effectiveness of the NIH Roadmap and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Critical Path Initiative. It will also cover new paradigms for drug development with an emphasis on biomarker and imaging endpoints. Finally, the speakers will attempt to glance at the future, predicting where translational medicine might be in 2020.

• Organizer: Maria T. Vassileva, Foundation for the National Institutes of Health
• Co-organizers: Katrina Kelner, AAAS/Science and Juli Staiano, AAAS Development Office
• Discussant: Gary Firestein, University of California, San Diego
• Speakers:
• Eric J. Topol, Scripps Research Institute - The Outcomes of the NIH Roadmap: Impact on Translational Medicine
• Gail Cassell, Eli Lilly and Company - The FDA Critical Path Initiative: A Perspective of the First Four Years
• Ellen V. Sigal, Friends of Cancer Research - Novel Funding Models for Translational Research

Genome Analyses and Sequencing To Advance Drug Discovery and Treatment
Friday, February 19, 2010: 1:30 PM-3:00 PM
Room 17B (San Diego Convention Center)
This seminar will address the rapidly moving scientific and technological field of genomics and its utility in elucidating the biological basis of human diseases and developing molecular diagnostics that can be used to individualize drug therapy of human diseases. Lectures will cover the first successful whole genome sequencing of a human cancer and the potential of this strategy to reveal genomic determinants of human cancers and to identify potential novel targets for developing new anticancer agents; and pharmacogenomics and how this field is changing the drug discovery paradigm and the way medications are "personalized" based on each patient's genome.

• Organizer: William Evans, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
• Discussants: Scott Weiss, Harvard Medical School and William Evans, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
• Speakers:
• Richard Wilson, Washington University School of Medicine - Sequencing Cancer Genomes To Elucidate Disease Pathogenesis and Discover Drug Target
• Mary Relling, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital - Genetics of Racial Differences in Drug Response, Disease Risk, and Health Disparities
• Dan Roden, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine - Challenges and Opportunities in the Assembly of Population Pharmacogenomics

The meeting also features plenary lectures from Peter Agre, Carol Greider, and Eric Lander. The full program for the annual meeting is available here.