Cambridge Healthtech Institute Announces Co-Host for the 9th Annual Leaders in Biobanking Congress

NEEDHAM, Mass. - March 13, 2017 - PRLog -- Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI), a leading provider of healthcare, technology and life science conferences, Cooperative Human Tissue Network (CHTN) Western Division and Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), the recipient of National Institutes of Health (NIH) Data and Research Support Center for the Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program, are pleased to announce Leaders in Biobanking Congress: Advancing Personalized Medicine - One Patient Biospecimen at a Time this October 25-27 in Nashville, TN.

"We are thrilled to be working with CHTN-Vanderbilt to co-host this meeting," states Mary Ann Brown, Executive Director of Conferences at CHI. "Personalized medicine has necessitated a shift in clinical care. Biobanks are key infrastructures for biomedical R&D because at one time or another, patient biospecimens have been stored in a biobank."

The Data and Research Support Center is directed by Josh Denny, M.D., M.S., Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Medicine and Co-Chair of the PMI Cohort Program Steering and Executive Committees.

"Precision medicine transcends any particular clinical specialty, any disease, and any one patient type. There is a very real human need for better precision medicine tools and approaches," Denny says. "I believe the new PMI will positively impact all of healthcare – and individual health – like nothing else ever has before. In the PMI we will launch a new paradigm of research that puts participants in the center of biomedical discovery and we will do it efficiently, at massive scale, with the goal of supporting the translation of data to discovery as fast as possible.

The Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) is a federally funded, groundbreaking approach to disease prevention and treatment based on the individual differences, exposure to the environment, genes and lifestyle. The goal is to enroll one million or more participants in the United States, who will share biological samples, such as blood and tissue, along with clinical data reported in their health records and diet/lifestyle information. According to Kerry R. Wiles, Director of the Cooperative Human Tissue Network (CHTN) at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the program is geared towards disease prevention, but also trying to find discrete bits of information that could be responsible for a particular disease process.

"The PMI will make substantive and compelling contributions to science and will impact our ability to refine matching criteria to more accurately deliver specimens to researchers with a greater amount of data," says Wiles.

Wiles continues to emphasize the significance and immediate need for the PMI: "Too often, clinicians are too late to prevent disease, and they are left with treating the complications of the disease itself. The PMI has the ability to impact everyone, including patients from every background actively engaging in every step of the disease process. This allows the biobank to link data to the biospecimen in a way that is vitally important to help find the triggers to the disease process, whether it be from environmental factors or genetic factors."

In conclusion, Wiles believes that the PMI is a "win for everyone, especially if we can give new hope to patients."

The 2017 Leaders in Biobanking program offers a lab tour and reception at VUMC, in-depth short courses, poster and exhibit viewing, and scientific sessions convening biomedical and biopharmaceutical researchers, regulators, biorepository managers and practitioners to share the best strategies for effective use of biospecimens within today's cutting-edge biomedical research, leading to the goal of personalized medicine.

For further details about the event, visit: http://biobankingcongress.com.

About Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI) (http://www.healthtech.com)

Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI), founded in 1992, is the industry leader in providing superior-quality scientific information to eminent researchers and business experts from top healthcare, technology, pharmaceutical, biotech, and academic organizations. Delivering an assortment of resources such as events, reports, publications and enewsletters, CHI's portfolio of products include Cambridge Healthtech Institute Conferences, Barnett Educational Services, Insight Pharma Reports, Cambridge Marketing Consultants, Cambridge Meeting Planners, Knowledge Foundation, Bio-IT World Clinical Informatics News and Diagnostics World.

About Vanderbilt University Medical Center

The Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) is a collection of several hospitals and clinics, as well as the schools of medicine and nursing associated with Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Vanderbilt operates the only Level 1 Trauma Center, the only Level 4 Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and the only Level 3 Burn Unit in its region. (Each of those levels represents the highest in its field.) The LifeFlight helicopter ambulance service has five helicopters, operated by Air Methods but staffed with Vanderbilt Flight Paramedics and Nurses, and an airplane transport and makes more than 2,800 flights a year. Vanderbilt also offers an organ transplantation center. Vanderbilt's first kidney transplant was in 1962; since then there have been more than 3,000 kidneys transplanted at Vanderbilt. VUMC has also had more than 600 liver transplants and 600 heart and lung transplants. Among Vanderbilt's other transplant milestones were Tennessee's first pancreas transplant in 1985, the first successful heart-lung transplant in the state in 1987, the first pediatric heart transplant in the state in 1987, and the first triple organ transplant of heart, lungs and liver in 2000. The Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center is one of 42 National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers, and the only one in Tennessee that provides treatment for adult and pediatric cancers. The center is also a member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, a non-profit alliance of 21 centers focused on improving quality and efficiency of cancer care.

VUMC ranks in the top 10 among the 126 medical schools in the United States in receipt of research funding from the National Institutes of Health.

The Cooperative Human Tissue Network Western Division has been in operation since 2001 after receiving an NCI grant, funding the resource.