Our Lunchtime Symposium on Thursday, September 26, will focus on disease associations, clinical trials and pharmacogenetics, featuring three guest speakers, Rasmi Thomas, US Military HIV Research Program; Ariella Sasson, Bristol-Myers Squibb; and Eszter Lazar-Molnar, University of Utah.
Additionally, our Head of Product, Efi Melista will announce major enhancements, including product developments on Multiplex and much more.
Password: ASHI2019SYMP
Date: Thursday, September 26, 2019 (Opening Day)
Time: 12:30pm-2:20pm
Venue: Room 408-410, Level 4, David L. Lawrence Convention Center
Agenda:
- Welcome and Introduction by Dan Mancuso (Market Development Director for the Americas, Omixon)
- Guest Speaker Presentations
- Major Company and Product Announcements by Efi Melista (Head of Product, Omixon)
- Open forum discussions (Q&A)
Guest Speakers:
Rasmi Thomas (Chief, Host Genomics Section US Military HIV Research Program, HJF, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research)
Title of Talk: Effect of HLA in Clinical Trials of HIV Vaccines
Her laboratory utilizes state-of-the-art next-generation sequencing technologies to conduct whole genome and transcriptome sequencing of HIV infected individuals, to understand the variation of the host on HIV disease pathogenesis, vaccine efficacy and response to therapy. Her research also focuses on characterizing genetic variation in immune response genes such as HLA and elucidating their impact on HIV and other infectious diseases. She has a PhD in Biotechnology from Rajiv Gandhi Center for Biotechnology, India and completed her postdoctoral training with Dr. Mary Carrington from the National Cancer Institute, NIH. Dr. Thomas has authored many papers in major peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Immunology, Science Translational Medicine and Nature Genetics.
Ariella Sasson (Senior Research Investigator, Bristol-Myers Squibb)
Title of Talk: High Throughput HLA Typing in the Cloud: How to Make it Rain HLA Genotypes
Ariella earned her undergraduate degree in mathematics and her doctorate in Computational Biology and Molecular Biophysics from Rutgers University in New Jersey. Quickly, her work began to focus around both technical and analytical aspects of Next Generation Sequencing. From her work in trying to identify genetic causes of pediatric diseases to working as part of the teams analyzing somatic data for the next biomarkers for treatment at BMS, she has played a leadership role in developing processing pipelines and storage solutions for genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic from preclinical and clinical samples. Through her work, she has had the opportunity to work with large datasets allowing her to develop expertise in how to process, manipulate, and prepare data for analyses in a high throughput fashion.
Eszter Lazar-Molnar (Assistant Professor, Department of Pathology, University of Utah School of Medicine)
Title of Talk: HLA Disease Association Testing by Next Generation Sequencing: Is It Ready for Prime Time?
Eszter Lazar-Molnar PhD, D(ABHI), D(ABMLI) is an assistant professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Utah School of Medicine. She is director of the Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics laboratory at University of Utah Health, and medical director in Immunology at ARUP Laboratories. She received her PhD at the Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary, followed by postdoctoral training at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, NY. Her research interest includes transplantation testing, cellular immunology and immunotherapy.
Password: ASHI2019SYMP
