Boston QSP January 2019 Event Announcement
Boston- Please join us on Wednesday, January 9th, 2019 for the Boston QSP January Event. We are preparing to ring in a new year with a fresh start and celebration with fellow Boston QSP community members in an evening of sharing, learning, and socializing.
The New Year event will feature a presentation titled "Model-Based Personalized and Optimized Chemo-Immunotherapy for Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML)" by two distinguished guest speakers Dr. Athanasios (Sakis) Mantalaris and Dr. Nicki Panoskaltsis. The talk will be followed by a mixer & reception where attendees will enjoy great company and conversation over selected craft beers and food from a local small business, in celebration of New Year.
Registration is free but RSVP is required. The event is sponsored by Pfizer. The Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) is the venue sponsor.
Agenda
5:00-5:30 PM: Registration (outside Havana Room)
5:30-6:20 PM: Presentation and Q&A. Presentation title: Model-Based Personalized and Optimized Chemo-Immunotherapy for Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) (Havana Room)
6:20-7:30 PM: Mixer & Reception (Venture Café, a few steps down the hallway from the Havana room)
Venue: Cambridge Innovation Center, 1 Broadway, Cambridge.
RSVP here. Limited seats.
* Please do not hesitate to RSVP on the waiting list if the RSVP is full as some guests "un-RSVP" as the event gets closer.
Speaker Detail:
Dr. Athanasios (Sakis) Mantalaris is currently a Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech/Emory. Previously, he was a Professor of BioSystems Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from University of Rochester. His expertise is in modeling of biological systems and bioprocesses with a focus on mammalian cell culture systems, stem cell bioprocessing, and tissue engineering. He has published over 160 original manuscripts, co-edited one book, and holds several patents with several more pending. He has received several awards including the Junior Moulton Award for Best Paper by the Institute of Chemical Engineerings (IChemE) in 2004, and an European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Award in 2013. In 2012, he was elected to be a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical & Biological Engineering. In 2015, he was awarded the Donald Metal by the ICHemE for his contributions to biochemical engineering.
Dr. Nicki Panoskaltsis is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Hematology and Oncology at Winship Cancer Institute, Emory University. Prior to this, she was an Associate Professor in Hematology at Imperial College London, Attending Hematologist and Head of the Hematology Department at London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust, London UK. She received her M.D. from University of Toronto and completed post-graduate training in Internal Medicine, Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplantation at University of Rochester. She then went on completing her Ph.D. in Immunology at Imperial College London. Her main research focuses on the immune pathogenesis of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) using bio-inspired 3D ex vivo models she helped develop, and on creating novel methods of improving chemo-immunotherapy-based precision treatments for AML using an interdisciplinary translational approach and mathematical modeling. Dr. Panoskaltsis served as Director of R&D at Northwick Park Hospital (2005-2008) and played a central role in handling of the TGN1412 serious adverse event in 2006 which informed the future of first-in-man clinical trials at an international level. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (UK), has been Chief/Principal Investigator of numerous clinical trials and research studies with over 60 peer-reviewed manuscripts and several patents.
Abstract:
Patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) have heterogeneous features specific to the patient as well as to the disease. Outside of clinical trials, few of these components are used to determine treatments. In order to move towards precision medicine, we have developed πiChemo, a computational application based on a dynamic mathematical modeling framework, using patient-, leukemia- and treatment-specific data to predict outcomes and to optimize chemotherapy regimens for patients with AML. The model simulations predicted outcomes for 18 patients who achieved complete remission, 4 patients who entered partial remission, and 6 patients who relapsed. We show that optimal doses and administration methods vary between patients and between chemotherapy cycles for the same individual, depending on the evolution of normal and abnormal populations in bone marrow. The notable fit between model predictions and daily patient data demonstrated model robustness and accuracy in the capacity to track patient-specific restaging bone marrow and daily peripheral blood count evolution before, during and after treatments. Furthermore, the πiChemo tool was extended to capture elements of immune system activation and AML patient responses during combined immunotherapy and chemotherapy. The model successfully captured population dynamics, including sensitive and resistant blasts in bone marrow and peripheral blood for patients treated with Cytarabine Arabinoside, Daunorubicin and Gemtuzumab Ozogamicin. The immune model revealed a dynamic BM signaling environment, with cytokine concentrations varying with innate immune cell population sizes. In conclusion, the πiChemo precision therapy tool has the potential to personalize optimal standard and novel treatments for AML in real-time.
About Boston QSP
Boston QSP is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose mission is to foster the sharing of QSP knowledge, challenges, solutions, and opportunities to advance the field as an interdisciplinary community in Boston.