Research > Symposia > 012909 Symposium on Human Variation: A Driver of Personalized Medicine Home       Overview       Syllabus       Map & Directions      Parking      Registration/Abstract Submission      Hotel     Contact Us Speakers Chair/Program Director Peter P. Tolias, PhD, is Executive Director of the Institute of Genomic Medicine, Research Director of the Autism Center and Professor of Pediatrics at the UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Molecular Genetics, Microbiology & Immunology at the UMDNJ--Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and author of over 40 scientific publications and the recipient of over 30 grants, awards and honors. He is the co-founder of several biotechnology companies and a consulting & capital sourcing firm specializing in the biotechnology sector. Previously, Dr. Tolias served several years as Worldwide Vice President of Advanced Research and Technology Assessment, at Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics - a Johnson & Johnson company - one of the world's largest clinical diagnostic product development and manufacturing companies, where he was responsible for Technology Assessment, Discovery Research and Clinical Development of Biomarkers that support Johnson & Johnson therapeutic products. He has also served as Executive Vice President of Corporate Development at Rosetta Genomics, a public biotechnology company advancing multiple internal development programs in microRNA diagnostics and therapeutics. His role was to develop Global Strategy, lead Global Business Development and US Operations and assist the company towards their eventual successful IPO. Earlier in his career, Dr. Tolias was the founder and Director of the Center for Applied Genomics, an academic R&D center now part of the Institute of Genomic Medicine, where he led development and commercialization of seven DNA microarray product-lines. He has also served as an Associate Professor of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics, UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School, an Associate Member of the Public Health Research Institute and earlier as an Assistant Member. Dr. Tolias obtained his PhD from McGill University in Canada, was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University and has received Executive training at the Wharton Business School of University of Pennsylvania. His personal interests include skiing, playing tennis and hockey, and musical composition and performance.   Keynote Speaker Arnold J. Levine, PhD, received a B.A. degree from Harpur College, SUNY, in 1961 and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1966. His research centers on the causes of cancer. In 1979, Levine and others discovered the p53 tumor suppressor protein, a molecule that inhibits tumor development. The p53 protein was originally thought to be an oncogene, or tumor accelerator . Levine was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1991 and to its Institute of Medicine in 1995. He is the author of more than 400 scientific papers and has received numerous awards and prizes. He now heads The Simons Center for Systems Biology at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, and is a Professor at the UMDNJ Robert Wood Johnson Medical School's Cancer Institute of New Jersey. Invited Speakers and Panelists Stuart A. Aaronson, MD, is an internationally recognized physician scientist, who has discovered a number of human oncogenes and the first normal function of a cancer gene. His discovery of erbB2 as a v-erbB-related gene amplified in a human breast carcinoma and demonstration of its transforming properties paved the way for targeted therapies directed against its product. Molecular diagnostic testing for this amplified gene for all patients with breast cancer now determines the benefit of this targeted therapy. He also isolated a growth factor with novel epithelial cell specificity and demonstrated its involvement in wound repair, leading to its FDA approval as a drug to ameliorate mucositis, a debilitating side effect of many cancer therapies. Thus, Dr. Aaronson's discoveries have directly led to new therapies for cancer patients. Dr. Aaronson received his M.D. from UCSF in 1966. He joined the National Institutes of Health in 1967 and became Chief of the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Biology at the National Cancer Institute in 1977. He joined Mount Sinai in 1994 as the Jack and Jane B. Aron Professor and Chairman of the Department of Oncological Sciences. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Distinguished Service Medal from the U.S. Public Health Service, the Rhoads Memorial Award from the American Association of Cancer Research, and the Paul Erhlich Prize from Germany. He is the author of over 545 publications, an inventor on more than 50 patents, and serves on numerous editorial boards and scientific advisory committees. Edward Abrahams, PhD, Executive Director of the Personalized Medicine Coalition, a non-profit educational and advocacy group representing diverse members with an interest in advancing medical progress through the adoption of personalized medicine concepts and products, brings extensive experience in industry, academia, and government to the position. As former Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Association, Dr. Abrahams managed all aspects of the Association, including public advocacy, media relations, and educational programs, tripling its size and revenues in three years. He also spearheaded the successful effort that led to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's investment of $200 million to commercialize biotechnology in that state. Previously, Dr. Abrahams had been Assistant Vice President for Federal Relations at the University of Pennsylvania, and also held a senior administrative position at Brown University. Before becoming a university administrator, Dr. Abrahams worked seven years for the United States Congress, including as a legislative assistant to Senator Lloyd Bentsen and as an economist for the Joint Economic Committee under the chairmanship of Congressman Lee Hamilton. He is a senior editor of Personalized Medicine. Raymond B. Birge, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-New Jersey Medical School in Newark NJ. He received a BS degree from the University of Connecticut in 1984, and a PhD in Biochemical Toxicology from the University of Connecticut in 1989. Dr. Birge did his postdoctoral training at The Rockefeller University with Professor Hidesaburo Hanafusa (1990-1994) and was Assistant Professor in the Laboratory of Molecular Oncology at Rockefeller University (1994-1998) and acting head of the same laboratory from 1998-2000. In 2000, Dr. Birge moved to the UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical and maintains his current position of Associate Professor and Head of Laboratory. Dr. Birge has served on numerous federal and private study sections (including NIH, NSF, DOD, and Alzheimer's Association) and is currently on the editorial board of The Journal of Biological Chemistry and Cell Communication and Signaling. Dr. Birge is the founding officer (with Richard Lockshin and Zahra Zakeri) of the Cell Death Society and previously Vice-President of the International Cell Death Society. Dr. Birge's primary research interests explore the cell biology involved in the recognition, immune modulation, and clearance of apoptotic cells as well as to elucidate the structure and function of the Crk and Crk L family of proto-oncogene proteins. Linda M. Brzustowicz, MD, a psychiatrist and molecular geneticist, runs the Psychiatric Genetics Laboratory at Rutgers University.  Dr. Brzustowicz received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and her medical degree from Columbia University. After completing a psychiatry residency program and postdoctoral training in molecular genetics at Columbia University she joined the faculty of Rutgers in 1994. Her research focuses on identifying and understanding genetic factors that increase an individual's risk for developing psychiatric illness.  Her laboratory currently studies schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and autism.  Work by her group spans a range of activities including recruitment and assessment of human subjects, development of definitions of illness for genetic studies, DNA sequence analysis for linkage and association studies, comparative genomic analysis, and gene expression studies. She has authored over 60 peer-reviewed publications in the areas of psychiatric and genetics and she is the principal investigator on four current NIMH R01 awards on the genetics of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism. Randy Burkholder, is Associate Vice President of Policy at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. In this position he develops and advocates for policies that support patient access and medical innovation while addressing the challenges of rising health care costs and sub-optimal health care quality. Mr. Burkholder guides PhRMA work on issues related to use of evidence in healthcare decision-making, health technology assessment, health outcomes research and Medicare coverage policy. He lead development and adoption of PhRMA's principles on government health outcomes research and evidence-based medicine, and its position on comparative effectiveness research. He also oversees work to advance public awareness and public policy in support of pharmaceutical innovation and personalized medicine. Mr. Burkholder has presented before the Medicare Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee and President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. He has over 15 years experience in health care policy, advocacy and communications in the medical device and pharmaceutical industries. Prior to joining PhRMA, Mr. Burkholder was Associate Vice President for Public Affairs at AdvaMed, the leading association of the medical device and diagnostics industries.  Mr. Burkholder is a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Personalized Medicine Coalition, for which he serves as Chair of the Communications Committee.   Michael F. Christman, PhD, was appointed as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Coriell Institute for Medical Research, effective June 1, 2007. In the last year he has initiated the Coriell Personalized Medicine Collaborative, a major research study designed to take an evidence-based approach to determining the utility of using genome information in the clinic. Dr. Christman is an expert in genetics and genomics and most recently served as professor and founding chair of the Department of Genetics and Genomics for Boston University School of Medicine. He has also served as associate professor, Department of Microbiology, University of Virginia; Assistant professor, University of California at San Francisco, Department of Radiation Oncology; and was a Jane Coffin Childs postdoctoral fellow at M.I.T. Dr. Christman received his bachelor's degree in chemistry with honors from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1981 and a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1985. Nadine Cohen, PhD, was trained as a pharmacist in France and received her Ph.D. in Immunogenetics in 1986 from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She was a post-doctorate fellow at Stanford University until 1989, and after heading the genetic screening laboratory at the Foundation Jean Dausset-Human Polymorphism Study Center in Paris, she was an Assistant Professor from 1995-2001 at the Technion Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine in Haifa (Israel). She joined the Jansen Research Foundation in August 1999 to establish a Pharmacogenomics program. She is currently Head of the Pharmacogenomics Team at the Johnson and Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development (Raritan, NJ, USA). She has published more than 60 scientific papers in the area of immunogenetics and human molecular genetics. Nadine Cohen has been the chair of the industry Pharmacogenomics Working Group from 2006-2008, and represents Johnson and Johnson on various external organizations engaged in Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Medicine. Nadine Cohen is also the editor of the book �Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Medicine�, that was recently published by Springer-Human Press.     Gregory J. Downing, DO, PhD, was appointed in March 2006 as Program Director for the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Michael O. Leavitt's priority initiative for Personalized Medicine.  In this role, he coordinates trans-HHS agency programs for the analysis, planning and implementation of policies and systems to facilitate adoption of Personalized Health Care practices. Prior to his move to HHS, Dr. Downing served at the National Institutes of Health since 1993 in research, policy, and program management roles. Dr. Downing earned his medical degree from Michigan State University and his PhD in pharmacology from the University of Kansas . He completed his residency in pediatrics and fellowship in neonatology before joining the faculty of the University of Missouri-Kansas City in the Department of Neonatology at The Children's Mercy Hospital . Dr. Downing is certified by the American Board of Pediatrics in pediatrics and neonatology - perinatal medicine. Daniel H. Fine, DMD, is currently a Professor and Chairman of the Department of Oral Biology and Director of the Center for Oral Infectious Diseases. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from Queens College, his DMD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1965 and his Certificate in Periodontology in 1967 from New York University. He served on the dental faculties of the University of Pittsburgh (1967-1970) and the Columbia University School of Dental and Oral Surgery (1971-1994) before coming to the New Jersey Dental School in mid-1994 as Director of the Dental Research Center. Dr. Fine's research focuses on host/parasite interactions in periodontal disease with a special emphasis on molecular genetics related to virulence of actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans. His group also investigates genetic susceptibility of individuals to juvenile periodontitis. In addition, Dr. Fine's laboratory participates in studies of biofilm development and methods that would interfere with development. Thomas J. Hudson, MD, was awarded an MD by the Université de Montréal in Montreal in 1985 and completed residencies in Internal Medicine and Clinical Immunology and Allergy in Montreal. He completed postdoctoral fellowships at the McGill Centre for the Study of Host Resistance in Montreal and at the Center for Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He did concurrent work with Dr. Eric Lander at the Center for Genome Research at MIT.  In 1993, Dr. Hudson joined the Whitehead Institute for Biological Research at the MIT Center for Genome Research as a Research Scientist, becoming Assistant Director in 1995. He was appointed Director of the Montreal Genome Centre in 1999 and Associate Director of the Canadian Genetic Diseases Network in Montreal in 2001. He became the Director of the McGill University and Génome Québec Innovation Centre in 2003 and is currently the Founder and Scientific Director of the Public Population Project in Genomics, (P3G) in Montreal .  Dr. Hudson was appointed President and Scientific Director, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Toronto, in 2006, where he is recruiting 50 principal investigators to conduct research in the prevention, targets and therapeutics for cancer. James L. Kennedy, MD, FRCP(C), was trained in psychology and biology as an undergraduate at York University in Toronto, and then completed his MS degree in neurochemistry at York. He attended medical school in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and then went to Yale University for specialty training in psychiatry. After completing his psychiatry residency in 1989, he engaged in postdoctoral research in Human Genetics at Yale, until 1991. He then returned to his native Canada to take the position of Head, Section of Neurogenetics, at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. He is also I'Anson Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, Director of the Department of Neuroscience Research at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, and a member of numerous professional societies including the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, American Society of Human Genetics, National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Affective Disorder, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Canada. He is co-organizer of the annual Pharmacogenetics in Psychiatry conference, held in New York City, now in its fourth year. Dr. Kennedy has published more than 300 scientific articles, and he is an active lecturer at numerous international conferences. His research program is dedicated to finding genes involved in the cause of mental illness. He has published pioneering findings relating gene variants in the dopamine, serotonin, and neurodevelopment systems to psychiatric disorders, and to treatment response. He has also led important investigations of unstable DNA mutation in mental illness. He has three patents awarded and three patents submitted, in the areas of genetic prediction of disease risk, medication response, and side effects. Dr. Kennedy has been mentor to over 25 postdoctoral fellows, 10 graduate students, and numerous other undergraduate students. In aggregate, his trainees have been awarded more than $1,000,000 in competitive fellowships or studentships, and many have progressed to hold senior scientific positions in academic and industrial settings. He also holds a prestigious $300,000 Ciba-Geigy award for lifetime mentoring in molecular genetics. Currently he is applying molecular genetic technology to the study of problem gambling, schizophrenia, manic depression, addictions and impulse control disorders. In addition, he is investigating genetic factors that may predict response and side effects to psychiatric medications (pharmacogenetics). A more recent area of interest is the integration of molecular genetics and neuroimaging as a combination approach to better understand brain structure and function. Mark A. Labow, PhD, joined Novartis (now the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research) in 1998. His group developed a platform of industrialized biology approaches allowing for the systematic analysis of gene function in mammalian cells using genome-scale gain of function and loss of function approaches. He is part of the Developmental and Molecular Pathways Department which is dedicated to the identification of novel disease gene relationships and technology applications that can reliably identify therapeutic strategies for unmet medical needs. Prior to joining Novartis, Mark worked at Hoffmann La-Roche where he started a new technologies group and led drug discovery efforts in oncology and inflammation. He received his Ph.D. in the field of molecular virology working for Dr. K.I. Berns at the University of Florida and Cornell Medical College. He did his post-doctoral work in the laboratory of Dr. Arnold Levine where he developed inducible expression systems for use in tissue culture and transgenic animals. He is currently Director of the Pathway Biology Unit, Developmental and Molecular Pathways Department at Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge MA. James R. Lupski, MD, PhD, received his initial scientific training at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as an Undergraduate Research Participant (URP) and at New York University completing the M.D./Ph.D. program in 1985. In 1986 he moved to Houston , Texas for clinical training in pediatrics (1986-1989) and medical genetics (1989-1992) and then established his own laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine where he remains, and as of 1995, as the Cullen Professor of Molecular and Human Genetics. His laboratory determines molecular mechanisms for disease using molecular biological, genomic, and human genetic approaches to investigate clinical phenotypes. Through studies of Charcot-Marie-Tooth peripheral neuropathy, a common autosomal dominant trait due to a submicroscopic 1.5 Mb duplication, and Smith-Magenis syndrome, a contiguous gene deletion syndrome, his laboratory has delineated the concept of �genomic disorders� and established the critical role of gene dosage in conveying human disease phenotypes. An increasing number of human diseases are recognized to result from recurrent DNA rearrangements (recent examples include both autism and schizophrenia) involving unstable genomic regions and have thus been classified as genomic disorders. Rearrangements of our genome have also recently been recognized as a major source of genome variation. The significance of such gene copy number variants (CNVs) to human traits (including behavioral traits), susceptibility to disease, and species evolution remains to be elucidated. Dr. Lupski's laboratory has also developed mouse models for genomic disorders. The Lupski laboratory has also collaborated with Dr. Richard A. Lewis to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of eye disease. These studies resulted in the isolation of the first gene for an inherited macular dystrophy, ABCA4 responsible for recessive Stargardt disease, elucidated the concept of triallelic inheritance for Bardet-Biedl syndrome, whose clinical manifestations include retinitis pigmentosa, and provided evidence for genetic modifiers of primary congential glaucoma due to CYP1B1 mutations. He recently completed (2004-2005) a sabbatical at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge , England in the laboratory of Allan Bradley studying mouse genetics and genomics. Dr. Lupski assumed the role of Vice Chairman in 2006 with primary responsibilities for the further development and further clinical implementation of molecular diagnostics with a particular focus on high resolution analysis of the human genome to link structural variants of the genome with clinical phenotypes. Francis J. McMahon, MD, received a BA in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1982 and an MD from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1987. He stayed at Hopkins to complete a medical internship, a residency in adult psychiatry, and a post-doctoral fellowship in genetics. He became an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Hopkins in 1993, and an Associate Professor in 1997. In 1998, he moved to the University of Chicago , where he continued his research while serving as Medical Director of the electroconvulsive therapy clinic. In 2002, he joined the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program of the NIMH Intramural Research Program as Chief of its genetics unit. He is also a member of the part-time faculty at the Johns Hopkins Department of Psychiatry. Dr. McMahon sits on the board of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics, the editorial boards of Biological Psychiatry and International Review of Psychiatry, and serves as a scientific advisor for the Tourette Syndrome Association, the American Society for the Prevention of Suicide, Autism Speaks, and the Rutgers University Cell & DNA Repository. He has received awards for his work from NARSAD, NAMI, NIMH, and The Edward F. Mallinckrodt Foundation, and was recently recognized with an NIH Director's Award for Significant Achievement. He has authored numerous scientific reports and textbook chapters. Mark Mintz, MD, attended medical school at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ)-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, performed his pediatric residency training at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center, and completed a Pediatric Neurology fellowship at UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School. He is triple-Board Certified in Child Neurology, Pediatrics and Neurodevelopmental Disabilities. Dr. Mintz is Founder and President & CEO of The Center for Neurological and Neurodevelopmental Health and the Clinical Research Center of New Jersey located in Voorhees, NJ. Dr. Mintz is widely published in the medical literature, and has been an invited lecturer at a number of national and international conferences, with a focus on Neurobehavioral and Neurodevelopmental Disorders, Epilepsy, Brain Injury, and NeuroAIDS. Dr. Mintz functions as the Principle Investigator on a variety of clinical drug trials, has been the Protocol Neurologist for a number of national Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials, and has participated on an array of committees and task forces of the National Institutes of Health and the New Jersey Governor's office. Additionally, Dr. Mintz has served in the National Health Service Corps of the United States Public Health Service, and has volunteered for medical relief missions in Romania and Russia. Randall W. Nelson, PhD, has focused his career primarily on the development of mass spectrometric technologies and methods for the characterization of biomolecules residing in various biological milieu. In 1986 he received his BS in Chemistry from Eastern Oregon State College ( LaGrande, OR ), and in 1990 received his PhD in Chemistry from Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ), where, under the mentorship of Professor Peter Williams , his thesis topic was the development of laser desorption/ionization approaches from frozen aqueous media for the mass spectrometry of DNA. From 1990 to 1993, Dr. Nelson occupied the roles of Senior Research Scientist and Product Manager at Vestec Corporation (Houston, TX, subsequently bought by Applied Biosystems, Inc.), where he oversaw the development of the world's first commercial line of MALDI-TOF mass spectrometers. From 1994 to 1997, he returned to the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at ASU as an Academic Professional/Visiting Assistant Professor. During this time, he developed a number of proprietary methods and devices for the detailed analysis of proteins from biological fluids. These technologies include mass spectrometric immunoassay (MSIA), bioreactive mass spectrometer targets (BRP) and surface plasmon resonance mass spectrometry (SPR-MS). From 1997 to 2006, Dr. Nelson undertook the roles of President and CEO of Intrinsic Bioprobes, Inc. (Tempe, AZ), which he co-founded to commercialize these technologies. Currently, Dr. Nelson is Director of the Molecular Biosignatures Analysis Unit within The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University , where he also holds the position of Research Professor and Affiliate Professorship in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. One of the objectives of the MBAU/BDI is to apply the novel proteomics and mass spectrometric technologies and methodologies to the study and understanding of diseases the human populations. Dr. Nelson has published over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts regarding biological mass spectrometry and proteomics, and is inventor or co-inventor on 30 issued and approximately 20 pending patents covering mass spectrometric technologies and methods.