Call for Papers and Posters

Discovery of Molecularly Targeted Therapies

Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing
January 5-8, 2016
Fairmont Orchid Resort
The Big Island of Hawaii, USA

Motivation

The delivery of personalized healthcare is predicated on the application of the best available scientific knowledge to the practice of medicine in order to promote health, improve outcomes and enhance patient safety. Unfortunately, current approaches to basic science research and clinical care are poorly integrated, yielding clinical decision-making processes that do not take advantage of up-to-date scientific knowledge. Basic scientists investigating the biological basis for a given disease may regularly encounter synergistic effects spanning two or more bio-molecular entities or processes that can contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying phenomena such as the etiologic basis of the targeted disease state or potential response to therapeutic agents. However, systematic approaches to the use of that knowledge in order to directly inform the selection of targeted molecular therapies for “real world” patients are extremely limited.

There are an increasing number of multi-modelling and in-silico knowledge synthesis techniques that can provide investigators with the tools to quickly generate hypotheses concerning the relationships between entities found in heterogeneous collections of scientific data — for example, exploring potential linkages among genes, phenotypes and molecularly targeted therapeutic agents, thus enabling the “forward engineering” of treatment strategies based on knowledge generated via basic science studies. Ultimately, the goal of such methodologies is to accelerate the identification of actionable research questions that can make direct contributions to clinical practice. Given increasing concerns over the barriers to the timely translation of discoveries from the laboratory to the clinic or broader population settings, such high-throughput hypothesis generation and testing is highly desirable. These needs are particularly critical in numerous disease areas where the availability of new therapeutic agents is constrained, thus calling for the re-use and repositioning of existing treatments.

Session Topics

In response to the challenges and opportunities enumerated above, this session will specifically focus on the use of multi-modeling approaches for improving molecularly targeted therapies and precision medicine. We invite submissions which integrate multiple data types, including but not limited to: clinical trial, electronic health record, drug toxicity, genomic, pharmacogenomic, proteomic, metabolomic, microbiome, exposome and structural data. Examples of submission topics emphasizing novel methodologies and applications include:

Methodology:

Novel methods for multi-scale data integration

Probabilistic models and predictive methods

Machine learning applications

Systems biology and network analysis

Visualization techniques for integrating disparate data types

Novel data resources and databases for molecularly targeted therapies

Application areas:

Drug-target interactions

Drug repurposing or repositioning

Synergistic drug combinations

Patient response and outcome

Off-target effects and adverse events

Drug-drug interactions

Pharmacokinetics

Pharmacodynamics

Session Organizers

Philip R.O. Payne, PhD, The Ohio State University, Philip.Payne@osumc.edu

Kun Huang, PhD, The Ohio State University, Kun.Huang@osumc.edu

Nigam Shah, MBBS, PhD, Stanford University, nigam@standford.edu

Primary contact for all inquiries: Philip.Payne@osumc.edu

Submission Information

Please note that the submitted papers are reviewed and accepted on a competitive basis. At least three reviewers will be assigned to each submitted manuscript.

Important Dates

· Paper submissions due: July 27, 2015 August 3, 2015

· Notification of paper acceptance: September 14, 2015

· Camera-ready final paper due: October 5, 2015

· Deadline for poster abstracts: November 17, 2015

Paper Format

Please see the PSB paper format template and instructions at http://psb.stanford.edu/psb-online/psb-submit.

The file formats we accept are: postscript (*.ps) and Adobe Acrobat (*.pdf)). Attached files should be named with the last name of the first author (e.g. altman.ps or altman.pdf). Hardcopy submissions or unprocessed TeX or LaTeX files will be rejected without review.

Each paper must be accompanied by a cover letter. The cover letter must state the following:

· The email address of the corresponding author.

· The specific PSB session that should review the paper or abstract.

· The submitted paper contains original, unpublished results, and is not currently under consideration elsewhere.

· All co-authors concur with the contents of the paper.

Submitted papers are limited to twelve (12) pages in our publication format. Please format your paper according to instructions found at http://psb.stanford.edu/psb-online/psb-submit/. If figures cannot be easily resized and placed precisely in the text, then it should be clear that with appropriate modifications, the total manuscript length would be within the page limit.