Clinical Talks
“Clinical Talks” has been renewed for yet another exciting, innovative, and enlightening season. This season will focus on sustainable innovations within Life Sciences, that have the potential to contribute to a better climate friendly future for our future generations. Also new this year is that the seminar is co-organized in a collaboration between SciLifeLab and KI Innovations.
Season 5, will be held September 2021 until March 2022 with scheduled Talks, during Friday mornings 09-09:30 am via ZOOM (with some time-zone friendly adjustments for our international speakers). Each session consists of a talk given by our invited speaker followed by Q&A. The seminar is an open educational seminar series for our ever-expanding Life Science community.
A short description of each talk will follow below. For more information, and signup, please check out our website link below
On May 6, Professor Tomi Mäkelä at the University of Helsinki Faculty of Medicine will talk about his work as executive officer of the iCAN Digital Precision Cancer Medicine flagship. iCAN is one of the Academy of Finland national research and innovation flagships for 2019-2026, with the goal to develop a nucleus of scientific excellence into competence clusters for discoveries, innovations, and societal and economic impact.
On April 22, Sami Blom, Director of Application Development, Aiforia, will join us and talk about his views on the future of digital pathology
On April 8, Dr. Jean-Marie Volland, Scientist at Berkeley Lab and Laboratory for Research in Complex Systems (LRC Systems), and Shailesh Date, CEO of LRC Systems (Adj. Assoc. Professor at UCSF),will talk about their recent discovery and characterization of the macro-bacteria Ca. Thiomargarita magnifica. The threadlike single-cell bacterium, commonly found in the Caribbean Mangroves, is visible to the naked eye, and able to grow up to 2 centimeters in length. In a recent effort, an international team studied the “magnificent” organism using fluorescence, x-ray, and electron microscopy, and fully sequenced the genome.
On March 18, Uppsala University Associate Professor Sara Mangsbo will talk about how the future of cancer therapy is becoming personal. Sara co-founded Strike Pharma to further develop the Uppsala University and SciLifeLab Drug Discovery platform co-developed ADAC technology (Adaptable Drug Affinity Conjugates). With current diagnostic tools also, immunotherapy can and should enter the omics-field and the developed delivery platform envisions a truly patient tailored neoantigen cancer vaccine strategy, ensuring that the body becomes the factory to generate tumor-specific T cells, that can find and destroy tumor cells regardless of the location in the body. With a cost and time efficient “True Precision Medicine” approach, tailored therapeutics will be a realistic future, ultimately lowering the healthcare burden for a sustainable future.
On February 18, we have invited Dr. Tero-Pekka Alastalo, to give a talk about his experience with co-founding the precision medicine company Blueprint Genetics in 2012. What started out as a technology development spinout from Stanford University, quickly grew to a global genetic testing company with >200 employees (acquired by Quest Diagnostics in 2020). With a solid background in pediatric cardiology and cardiovascular research, Tero-Pekka recently joined CardioSignal by Precordior as the Chief Medicinal Officer and General Manager of the US operations. During his talk, he will share his insights on how technology can revolutionize the medical methodology for a sustainable future and better use of resources.
On February 4, oncologist, and Head of Research at Division of Cancer Medicine at Oslo University Hospital Professor Åslaug Helland will give a talk about her mission with the clinical precision medicine study IMPRESS-Norway that she co-founded in 2021. She is also a Professor at the University of Oslo. Åslaug is the PI of the IMPRESS-N study with the goal of “Improving public cancer care by implementing precision medicine in Norway,” and it is a national clinical study for patients with advanced cancer after standard therapy, with multiple Norwegian healthcare partners as well as industry collaborators. The effort is preparing Norway towards the many sustainable future benefits precision medicine has to offer for future healthcare solutions.
On November 26, we will host Karolinska Institute (KI) Professor Richard Rosenquist Brandell. In addition to his academic research and clinical work, he also co-founded the Genomic Medicine Sweden (GMS) initiative and serves as the Director of GMS. Richard will share his insights on Sweden’s national strategy to implement Precision medicine into our healthcare environment and pave the road for all the amazing the potential the approach has to offer. To benefit from the sustainable advantages of tailored and efficient use of diagnostics and treatment options, Sweden needs to prepare our society for the legal challenges and infrastructures needed to support and enable this transformation.
On October 29, we will host a dual presentation with Dr. Ina Stelzer and Associate Professor Brice Gaudilliere. In the Stanford School of Medicine Clinical Gaudilliere lab, Ina and Brice have developed an groundbreaking multi-omics diagnostic tool in order to track the maternal metabolome, proteome and immunome to predict exact labor onset. Estimating the time of delivery is of high clinical importance to minimize pre- and post-term deviations causing complications and suffering with ultimately more streamlined use of medical resources for a sustainable future.
On October 21, Dr. Emily Leproust will talk about her mission with co-founding Twist Bioscience, and how their revolutionary oligosynthesis plattform is writing the future with DNA. With previously unprecedented lengths, costs, and industrial scalability it’s a real game changer in the Life Science industry. DNA tools can now be used in fields as medicine (diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics), agriculture, industrial chemicals, and data storage. Twist Bioscience enables the users to develop ways to better lives and improve the sustainability of the planet.
On October 15, it’s our great pleasure to host Professor Emma Lundberg once again. This time she will focus her Talk on her innovative company Mindforce GameLab. With the Fig platform, patients can via gamification transform into “playtients”, people with medical conditions who enjoy playing games with a purpose to establish healthy habits. Fig guides you on the journey to better health, including improved behavioral administration of medicals for intended and sustainable use.
On September 30, Dr. Hyunsung John Kim, will talk about the amazing potential RNA liquid biopsies can offer modern healthcare, by detecting cancer early, when it can be cured, we can ultimately treat them cheaper, and more efficient sustainable way. While working as a senior Bioinformatician at Illumina, John Kim was part of the founding team who branched out GRAIL, with its very Galleri test soon to hit our Clinical reality.
On September 9, we will host a dual presentation held by Olink co-founder Dr. Simon Fredriksson and Dr. Andrea Ballagi, Olink Proteomics VP Sales and Marketing. The talk will feature a dual presentation, showcasing the visionary development of the power a technological platform can have, and how it became a market leading diagnostic tool that today shows the promise to highly effectivize the way medical diagnostics and treatment options are done in a more sustainable way.
First out on September 3. Dr. Karim Cassimjee, World Economic Forum delegate, and inventor and co-founder behind EnginZyme AB, whose technology can radically change the way the chemical industry functions today, resulting in significantly lower climate footprints.