Kim Popovits, the Chairman, CEO and President of Genomic Health, will be honoured at the Personalized Medicine World Conference (PMWC) 2013 Israel on 30 June 2013 for her pioneering efforts in successfully advancing personalized medicine into the clinical adoption phase, both in the USA and globally. After working on Herceptin at Genentech, Kim oversaw commercialization efforts at Genomic Health starting in 2002, eventually bringing one of the first personalized medicine diagnostic tests, OncoType DX, into clinics around the world in 2006. Israel's Clalit was the first ex-US health maintenance organization to reimburse the assay.
Oncotype DX breast cancer test is Genomic Health's lead product and has been shown to predict the likelihood of chemotherapy benefit as well as recurrence in invasive breast cancer and has been shown to predict the likelihood of recurrence in ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). In addition to this widely adopted test, Genomic Health provides the Oncotype DX colon cancer test, the first multi-gene expression test developed for the assessment of risk of recurrence in patients with stage II and stage III disease and the Oncotype DX prostate cancer test, which predicts disease aggressiveness in men with low-risk disease. As of 31 March 2013, more than 19 000 physicians in over 70 countries had ordered more than 350 000 Oncotype DX tests. Genomic Health has a robust pipeline focused on developing tests to further optimize the treatment of breast, colon and prostate cancers, as well as the treatment of renal cancer.
Past recipients of the PMWC Luminary Award include:
— Janet Woodcock, MD, has shown dedication to personalized medicine by fast-tracking individualized treatments through the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval process and by encouraging collaboration between the regulatory and industry arenas. During her tenure, both of the individualized treatments Xalkori and Zelboraf received FDA approval paired with companion diagnostics. Dr Woodcock is the director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the FDA.
— Brian Druker, MD, is a co-developer of Gleevec, the first drug to target the genetic defects of a particular cancer while leaving healthy cells unharmed. Dr Druker is currently Director of the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) Knight Cancer Institute, JELD-WEN Chair of Leukemia Research at OHSU, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
— George Church, PhD, co-developed the first direct genomic sequencing method in 1984 and helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984 while he was a Research Scientist at newly formed Biogen Inc. He invented the broadly applied concepts of molecular multiplexing and tags, homologous recombination methods and DNA array synthesizers. He is currently a professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and a professor of Health Sciences & Technology at Harvard and MIT.
— Lee Hood, MD, PhD, led the team that developed the first automated DNA sequencer and has co-founded more than 14 biotechnology companies, including Amgen, Applied Biosystems, Systemix, Darwin and Rosetta. Dr Hood, the co-founder and president of the Seattle-based Institute for Systems Biology, was named one of the 12 winners of the National Medal of Science – the highest honour the US awards to scientists.
More information on the upcoming PMWC can be found at: http://2013il.pmwcintl.com/index.php
