conference

Imagine the Future of Health and Medicine: TEDMED 2012

April 11, 2012 | by Walter Jessen

There’s one place where you can learn about the latest innovations in technology, science, health and medical research from some of the most influential thought leaders in their fields: TEDMED.

TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, is the world’s most famous conference on the ideas that shape the world. For the past three years, there’s been a special TED just for health and medicine — TEDMED — where passionate doers and thinkers go once a year to experience the power of new ideas, hear amazing and inspiring talks, meet innovative people, and leave transformed.

The annual TEDMED conference started today. TEDMED brings together 1500 thinkers and doers from a wide array of medical and non-medical disciplines. For the next three and a half days (April 10-13) at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., this uniquely diverse community will explore the ideas, innovations and challenges that will help shape the future of health and medicine for 300 million Americans … and the world.

TEDMED is hosting over 60 speakers this year, including Francis S. Collins, the Director of the National Institutes of Health; Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, President and CEO, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Joel Salatin, Polyface organic farmer and author; and Ivan Oransky, Executive Editor of Reuters Health.

TEDMED has no agenda and no policy prescriptions. Instead, the organization seeks to serve the nation — and the world — by creating a safe place where people with very different ideas can come together to talk, to learn and to celebrate the amazing world we live in.

Biomarker Bulletin: April 19, 2011

April 19, 2011 | by Walter Jessen

Biomarker Bulletin is an occasionally recurring update of news focused on biomarkers aggregated at BiomarkerCommons.org. Biomarkers are physical, functional or biochemical indicators of normal physiological or disease processes. The individualization of disease management — personalized medicine — is dependent on developing biomarkers that promote specific clinical domains, including early detection, risk, diagnosis, prognosis and predicted response to therapy.

Cancer Biomarker Study Data Presented at the 2011 AACR Meeting
A roundup of five research studies on cancer biomarkers that were presented earlier this week at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 102nd Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida.
2010 Australian Biomarker Discovery Conference Summary: Biomarkers in the Next Decade
In the February edition of the journal Pharmacogenomics (Future Medicine), Greg Gibson from the School of Biology at the Georgia Institute of Technology provides a summary of talks and discussion from the Inaugural Australian Biomarker Discovery Conference (BDC 2010) held in Shoal Bay, Australia in December.
Clusterin Not a Potential Early Biomarker for Alzheimer’s Disease Development
According to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, plasma clusterin levels are significantly associated with prevalence and severity of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but not with incidence.
Sage Bionetworks Partners with CHDI Foundation, Takeda for Neurobiology
Sage Bionetworks has started projects to build advanced computational models of neurobiological disease through two ongoing partnerships with the CHDI Foundation and Takeda Pharmaceuticals.
Case Western Bioinformatics Spinoff NeoProteomics Signs Licensing Deal
Late last month, NeoProteomics, a bioinformatics spinoff company from Case Western Reserve University, signed an exclusive option agreement to license technology from the university.

The 2010 NF Conference – Connecting the Public with the Research

June 4, 2010 | by Walter Jessen

Neurofibromatosis (NF) encompasses a set of genetic disorders that cause benign and malignant tumors to grow along various types of nerves; it can also affect the development of bones and skin. There are three main types of NF tumors: neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2) and schwannomatosis. NF1 is the most frequent of the three; one in every 3,000 children is born with the disease.

The Children’s Tumor Foundation (CTF) is the leading non-governmental funder of scientific research into neurofibromatosis and has funded NF studies for over 25 years. Their goal is to identify NF drug therapies and improve the lives of those living with the disorder. The Foundation also endeavors to increase public awareness of NF and provides resources for NF patients and their families.