PHIND Seminar Series: Identifying Microbiome Markers of Progression of Alzheimer’s Disease
Ami Bhatt, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Medicine (Hematology) and of Genetics
Stanford University
Gavin Sherlock, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Genetics
Stanford University
11:00am – 12:00pm Seminar & Discussion
RSVP: https://stanford.zoom.us/webinar/register/8016040837299/WN_iBOM7R4XQjOPSb20rkUxbw
Location: Zoom Webinar
Webinar URL: https://stanford.zoom.us/s/99730716280
Webinar ID: 997 3071 6280
Dial: +1 650 724 9799 or +1 833 302 1536 (Toll Free)
Password: 767148
ABOUT AMI BHATT
In perpetual awe of how ‘simple’ microbial organisms can perturb complex, multicellular eukaryotic organisms, Ami Bhatt has chosen to dedicate her research program to inspecting, characterizing and dissecting the microbe-human interface. Nowhere is the interaction between hosts and microbes more potentially impactful than in immunocompromised hosts and global settings where infectious and environmental exposures result in drastic and sometimes fatal health consequences.
Ami’s group identifies problems and questions that arise in the course of routine clinical care. Often in collaboration with investigators at Stanford and beyond, the group applies modern genetic, molecular and computational techniques to seek answers to these questions, better understand host-microbe interactions and decipher how perturbation of these interactions may result in human disease phenotypes.
GAVIN SHERLOCK’S RESEARCH INTERESTS
Adaptive Evolution and the Fitness Landscape: When yeast are evolved under various selective pressures in a chemostat, mutations that arise and provide an adaptive advantage will expand within the population. We have pioneered the use of high throughput sequencing to determine the identity of such mutations, as well as to understand the dynamics of the mutations within the populations, and the interactions between the mutations (such as epistasis). Further, we have developed a DNA barcode based lineage tracking system to determine the distribution of fitness effects (DFE) for newly arising beneficial mutations. We have also characterized what we call the genotype-fitness map for beneficial mutations, and have investigated why beneficial mutations provide a positive fitness effect. We are also interested in how beneficial mutations trade-off for different traits, and how those trade-offs constrain adaptive evolution.
Hosted by: Garry Gold, M.D.
Sponsored by the PHIND Center and the Department of Radiology
PHIND Seminar Series: Topics Below
Ahmed Metwally, PhD
“Pre-symptomatic detection of COVID-19 via wearables biosensors”
Postdoctoral Scholar – Michael Snyder, PhD Lab
Department of Genetics
Stanford University
Pierre-Alexandre Fournier, MS
“Continuous remote cardiorespiratory and health monitoring using the Hexoskin biometric shirt”
Co-founder and CEO
Hexoskin
Location: Zoom Webinar
Webinar URL: https://stanford.zoom.us/s/98925964231
Dial: +1 650 724 9799 or +1 833 302 1536 (Toll Free)
Webinar ID: 989 2596 4231
Passcode: 298382
11:00am – 12:00pm Seminar & Discussion
RSVP: https://stanford.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_bruT-pvvQUePuBLqm2SLkQ
Ahmed Metwally Abstract
Wearable devices digitally measuring vital signs have been used for monitoring health and illness onset and have a high potential for real-time monitoring and disease detection. As such, they are potentially useful during public health crises, such as the current COVID-19 global pandemic. In my talk, I’ll discuss how wearables biosensors can be used as a tool to early detect COVID19 onset using physiological and activity data. By using retrospective smartwatch data, we showed that 63% of the COVID-19 cases could be detected before symptom onset in real-time via the occurrence of extreme elevations in resting heart rate relative to the individual baseline. Our findings suggest that consumer wearables may be used for the large-scale real-time detection of respiratory infections, often pre-symptomatically, and provide an approach for managing epidemics using digital tracking and health monitoring.
About Ahmed Metwally
Ahmed Metwally is a postdoctoral scholar in the Snyder lab at Stanford University. Ahmed received his Ph.D. in Bioinformatics/Bioengineering and MS in Computer Science (focused on Deep Learning), both from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 2018. He currently works on developing novel machine learning methods for longitudinal multimodal biomedical data fusion (omics and wearable biosensors data) to early detect cardiometabolic diseases and personalize their treatments. Ahmed has received numerous awards, such as NIH Predoctoral Translational Scientist fellowship, ISMB’20 best talk award, Stanford COVID-19 RISE Grant, second-place award at Stanford Health++ Hackathon, and many travel awards NSF, IEEE, ISCB, and UIUC for various educational and scholarly activities.
Pierre-Alexandre Fournier Abstract
The Hexoskin Connected Health platform will be discussed as an example of a biometric shirt validated for use in telehealth and clinical research. Hexoskin has the only clinically validated biometric garment which provides continuous monitoring of numerous and unique physiological parameters. Hexoskin is an enabling technology for telehealth use cases, such as remote patient monitoring, rehab, and detect the onset of illness. Hexoskin offers a unique set of high-resolution biometric data that can continuously monitor activity, sleep, cardiac and respiratory data. Projects in fields such as cardiology, respiratory, behavioral and physiological psychology, biofeedback research, sleep research, and health will be described. The Hexoskin Connected Health Platform provides researchers with accessible solutions such as the Hexoskin Dashboards, Open API, and Apps to manage, visualize, annotate, analyze, and export raw & processed health data. Data extraction tools allow access to the raw data with time series for machine learning and artificial intelligence projects.
About Pierre-Alexandre Fournier
Pierre-Alexandre Fournier is co-founder and CEO of Hexoskin, a Montreal-based company focused on clinical-grade wearable sensors and AI software for health and clinical research. Hexoskin was founded in 2006 and in 2013 released the first iPhone compatible smart clothing for health monitoring, winning several international awards. In 2018 Hexoskin launched a remote health monitoring system for astronauts on the International Space Station. Hexoskin recently reached the milestone of 100 scientific publications. Pierre-Alexandre earned his MASc and his BEng in Electrical Engineering from the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal and became a lecturer there teaching machine learning. He completed the Harvard Business School HBX Core program with high honors. Pierre-Alexandre is also an advocate for transparency in healthcare, patient empowerment, and healthcare innovation through design.
Hosted by: Angela McIntyre, Executive Director, eWEAR Initiative
Sponsored by: PHIND Center, Department of Radiology, eWEAR Initiative
PHIND Seminar Series: Maternal Trauma History, Attachment Style, and Depression Are Associated with Broad DNA Methylation Signatures in Infants
Thalia Robakis, M.D., Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Psychiatry
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Location: Zoom
Webinar URL: https://stanford.zoom.us/s/95483174518
Dial: US: +1 650 724 9799 or +1 833 302 1536 (Toll Free)
Webinar ID: 954 8317 4518
Passcode: 179384
11:00am – 12:00pm Seminar & Discussion
RSVP Here
ABSTRACT
Background: The early environment provides many cues to young organisms that guide their development as they mature. Maternal personality and behavior are an important aspect of the environment of the developing human infant. The molecular mechanisms by which these influences are exerted are not well understood. We attempted to identify whether maternal traits could be associated with alterations in DNA methylation patterns in infants.
Methods: 32 women oversampled for history of depression were recruited in pregnancy and provided information on depressive symptoms, attachment style, and history of early life adversity. Buccal cell DNA was obtained from their infants at six months of age for a large-scale analysis of methylation patterns across 5×106 individual CpG dinucleotides, using clustering-based criteria for significance to control for multiple comparisons. Separately, associations between maternal depression, attachment style, and history of adversity and psychobehavioral outcomes in preschool-age children were examined.
Results: Tens of thousands of individual infant CpGs were alternatively methylated in association with each of the three studied maternal traits. Genes implicated in cell-cell communication, developmental patterning, growth, immune function/inflammatory response, and neurotransmission were identified. The result sets were highly coextensive among the three maternal traits, but areas of divergence exhibited intriguing parallels with behavioral outcomes.
Conclusions: Maternal personality traits are an important aspect of the infant environment that shapes offspring development in many ways. Infant genes that are epigenetically modified in reponse to maternal traits are potential candidate mediators for these effects. We have identified a large number of such genes and demonstrated parallels to clinically measurable outcomes in children.
ABOUT
Dr. Robakis is a psychiatrist with clinical and research interests in perinatal mood disorders and in the contribution of early life experiences to adult mental health and illness. She completed her M.D. as well as a Ph.D. in developmental neurobiology at Columbia University’s Medical Scientist Training Program, residency training in psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine, and a research fellowship in perinatal mood disorders also at Stanford. She remained on the clinical faculty at Stanford until 2019, when she accepted a position at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she is currently Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Assistant Director of the Women’s Mental Health Program.
Dr. Robakis’ research interests include the effects of early life stress and disordered attachment on risk for psychiatric illness in the perinatal period, on alterations in metabolism and cognition, and on psychobehavioral development in offspring. She is particularly interested in using epigenetic marks to help identify the biological pathways through which early life experiences exert their effects on outcomes in adulthood and intergenerationally.
Hosted by: Garry Gold, M.D.
Sponsored by the PHIND Center and the Department of Radiology
Join us for the annual Precision Health & Integrated Diagnostics Symposium. This all-day virtual event will showcase the exciting PHIND work that is going on campus wide. The featured presentations will be from current PHIND investigators and Precision Health experts. We hope you can join us and look forward to building the PHIND community together.
The agenda and speaker information are available on the PHIND website. The event is fully virtual and the livestream link will be posted on the PHIND website closer to the event.
Date: April 10, 2021 (8 AM-6PM)
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- 8 AM-8:20 AM opening remarks Zainub and Pete
- 8:20 AM-9:20 AM Talk 1 “I fought the law and no one won”
- 10 minute Break
- 9:30 AM-10:30 AM talk 2 students and doctors with disabilities panel
- 20 minute break
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- 10:50 AM-11:50 AM Breakout
- One hour lunch (TBD)
- 12:50 PM-1:50 PM Talk 3 the frontiers of disability research
- Lisa Meeks is moderating
- Bonnie Swenor invited
- 10 minute break
- 2:00 PM-3:00 PM breakout 2
- 10 minute break
- 3:10 PM-4:10 PM talk 4 do-it-yourself disability advocacy (Poullos/Tolchin with students)
- 4:10 PM-4:30 PM closing remarks
- 4:30 PM-6 PM virtual happy hour
PHIND Seminar Series: Impact of the Veterans Affairs National Abdominal Aortic Screening Program
Manuel Garcia-Toca, M.D.
Clinical Professor of Surgery
Chief, Division of Vascular Surgery
Santa Clara Valley Medical Center (SCVMC)
Oliver O. Aalami, M.D.
Clinical Associate Professor of Surgery, Vascular Surgery
Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital
Location: Zoom
Webinar URL: https://stanford.zoom.us/s/98417624095
Dial: US: +1 650 724 9799 or +1 833 302 1536 (Toll Free)
Webinar ID: 984 1762 4095
Passcode: 111283
11:00am – 12:00pm Seminar & Discussion
RSVP Here
ABSTRACT
Background: The U.S. Federal Government enacted the Screen for Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms Very Efficiently Act in January 2007. Simultaneously, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) implemented a more inclusive AAA screening policy for veteran beneficiaries shortly afterwards.
Our study aimed to evaluate the impact of the VA program on AAA detection rate and all-cause mortality compared to a cohort of patients whose aneurysms were identified by other abdominal imaging.
Methods: We identified veterans with an AAA screening study using the two existing Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes (G0389 and 76706). In the comparison group, eligible abdominal imaging studies included ultrasound, computed tomography (CT), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) queried according to CPT codes between 2001 and 2018.
We used a difference-in-differences regression model to evaluate the change in aneurysm detection rate and all-cause mortality five years before and eleven years after the VA implemented the screening policy in 2007.
We calculated survival estimates after AAA screening or non-screening imaging of patients with or without AAA diagnosis and used multivariate Cox regression model to evaluate mortality in patients with a positive AAA diagnosis adjusting for patient characteristics and comorbidities.
Results: We identified 3.9 million veterans with abdominal imaging, a total of 303,664 of whom were coded has having an AAA US screening between 2007 and 2018. An AAA diagnosis was made in 4.84% of the screening group vs. 1.3% in the non-screening imaging group P<0.001, yet more aneurysms were found with general imaging studies (50,730 vs.15,449) (Fig 1).
On Kaplan-Meier survival analysis, patients with an AAA diagnosis had higher overall mortality than patients who screened normal; patients with aneurysms found with non-screening imaging had the highest mortality, log-rank P<0.001 (Fig 2).
The difference in differences regression analysis, showed that the absolute AAA detection rate was 1.55% higher (95% CI 1.2- 1.8), and the mortality was 13.89 % lower (95% CI 10.18 %-16.66 %) after the introduction of the screening program in 2007.
Multivariate Cox regression analysis in patients with AAA diagnosis (65-74-year-old) demonstrated a significantly lower 5-year mortality [HR 0.45 (95% CI 0.43-0.48)] for patients in the US Screening group P<0.001.
Conclusions: In a nationwide analysis of VA patients, implementation of AAA screening was associated with improved survival and a higher rate of AAA diagnosis. These findings provide further support for this program’s continuation versus defaulting to incidental recognition following other abdominal imaging.
ABOUT MANUEL GARCIA-TOCA
Dr. Garcia-Toca earned his medical degree at the Universidad Anahuac in Mexico 1999. He has a master’s degree in Health Policy from Stanford University.
He received his general surgery training at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Brown University in 2008. He then completed a Vascular Surgery fellowship at Northwestern University in 2010. Dr. Garcia-Toca is board certified in both surgery and vascular surgery.
Dr. Garcia-Toca joined Stanford Vascular Surgery in 2015. He is currently Clinical Professor of Surgery in the Division of Vascular Surgery. Dr. Garcia-Toca had previously served as an Assistant Professor of Surgery at Brown University. Dr. Garcia Toca is a Staff Surgeon at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose.
His research interests include new therapeutic strategies and outcomes for the management of vascular trauma, cerebrovascular diseases, dialysis access, aortic dissection and aneurysms.
ABOUT OLIVER O. AALAMI
Dr. Aalami is a Clinical Associate Professor of Vascular & Endovascular Surgery at Stanford University and the Palo Alto VA and serves as the Lead Director of Stanford’s Biodesign for Digital Health. He is the course director for Biodesign for Digital Health, Building for Digital Health and co-founder of the open source project, CardinalKit, developed to support sensor-based mobile research projects. His primary research focuses on clinically validating the sensors in smartphones and smartwatches in patients with cardiovascular disease to further precision health implementation.
Hosted by: Garry Gold, M.D.
Sponsored by the PHIND Center and the Department of Radiology
Targeted violence continues against Black Americans, Asian Americans, and all people of color. The department of radiology diversity committee is running a racial equity challenge to raise awareness of systemic racism, implicit bias and related issues. Participants will be provided a list of resources on these topics such as articles, podcasts, videos, etc., from which they can choose, with the “challenge” of engaging with one to three media sources prior to our session (some videos are as short as a few minutes). Participants will meet in small-group breakout sessions to discuss what they’ve learned and share ideas.
Please reach out to Marta Flory, flory@stanford.edu with questions. For details about the session, including recommended resources and the Zoom link, please reach out to Meke Faaoso at mfaaoso@stanford.edu.
PHIND Seminar Series: Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Tests – “Liquid Biopsy Tests” – Are Here – But Will Payers Provide Insurance Coverage?
Patricia A. Deverka, MD, MS, MBE
Executive Director
Deverka Consulting, LLC
Kathryn A. Phillips, PhD
Professor of Health Economics and Health Services Research
Founding Director, UCSF Center for Translational and Policy Research on Personalized Medicine (TRANSPERS)
Location: Zoom
Webinar URL: https://stanford.zoom.us/s/99194110894
Dial: US: +1 650 724 9799 or +1 833 302 1536 (Toll Free)
Webinar ID: 991 9411 0894
Passcode: 044958
11:00am – 12:00pm Seminar & Discussion
RSVP Here
ABSTRACT
The emergence of Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Tests (MCED) – “liquid biopsy screening tests” – has generated enormous interest because they could fundamentally shift how cancer screening is done. One company is already offering an MCED test for clinical use as a “lab developed test” (LDT) – and thus addressing the question of “who will pay” has become urgent. These tests offer potentially transformative screening and clinical benefits, but their characteristics present unique challenges to payer coverage decision-making and generate concerns about the potentially high cost of widespread adoption.
We will present our ongoing work on examining the unique challenges that MCED present for payer coverage decision-making, drawing on our extensive experience with coverage and reimbursement for new technologies. We will focus on identifying the evidence generation strategies that could be pursued now to inform payer decision-making so that coverage policies can be developed that are appropriate and equitable for this ground-breaking technology.
ABOUT PATRICIA A. DEVERKA
Dr. Deverka is the Executive Director at Deverka Consulting, LLC where she focuses on helping biotechnology companies and start-ups develop evidence to support payer coverage and clinical adoption of innovative technologies. Her most recent projects have focused on breakthrough tests and drugs focused on population genomic screening, cancer, and ultra-rare disorders. Prior to starting her consulting practice, Dr. Deverka has worked in the fields of health economics and outcomes research in both non-profit and for-profit settings as a researcher, educator, and department head. She has extensive experience with patient-centered outcomes research, drug and diagnostic reimbursement planning, cost- effectiveness analysis, and bioethical issues surrounding the use of new technologies. While working in academia and several non-profit firms, she has participated in numerous NIH-funded studies to evaluate policy barriers to clinical integration of new genomic technologies and has published extensively on strategies to promote evidence generation and data sharing. She is a member of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)’s Genomic Medicine Work Group and serves as a member of NHGRI’s Advisory Council. Deverka has a medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh and is board certified in General Preventive Medicine and Public Health. She also has a master’s degree in bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania and completed a policy fellowship at Duke University’s Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy.
ABOUT KATHRYN A. PHILLIPS
Kathryn A. Phillips founded and leads the UCSF Center for Translational and Policy Research on Personalized Medicine (TRANSPERS), which focuses on developing objective evidence on how to effectively, efficiently, and equitably implement precision/personalized medicine into health care. Kathryn has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles in major journals including JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, Science, and Health Affairs. She has had continuous funding from NIH as a PI for over 25 years and was recently awarded a 5-year NIH grant to examine payer coverage and economic value for emerging genomic technologies (cell-free DNA tests and tests based on polygenic risk scores). Kathryn serves on the editorial boards for Health Affairs, Value in Health, JAMA Internal Medicine, Genetics in Medicine; is a member of the National Academy of Medicine Roundtable on Genomics and Precision Health; and has served on the governing Board of Directors for GenomeCanada and as an advisor to the FDA, CDC, and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. She has also served as an advisor to many diagnostics, sequencing, and pharmaceutical companies. Kathryn is Chair of the Global Economics and Evaluation of Clinical Sequencing Working Group, and a member of an evidence review committee for the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER).
Hosted by: Garry Gold, M.D.
Sponsored by the PHIND Center and the Department of Radiology
PHIND Seminar Series: Pervasive Computing With Everyday Devices To Build & Sustain Resilience & Wellbeing
Pablo E. Paredes, PhD
Clinical Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and, by courtesy, Epidemiology and Population Health
Stanford University
Zoom Webinar Details
Webinar URL: https://stanford.zoom.us/s/99098874758
Dial: US: +1 650 724 9799 or +1 833 302 1536 (Toll Free)
Webinar ID: 990 9887 4758
Passcode: 784858
11:00am – 12:00pm Seminar & Discussion
12:00pm – 12:15pm Reception
RSVP Here
ABSTRACT
As society progresses towards increasing pervasive computing levels, I design and build technology-enabled solutions to repurpose everyday devices to help people build resilience and grow wellbeing. I leverage biological and behavioral knowledge to design systems that balance user needs and health outcomes while mitigating surveillance and agency risks. In this talk, I present my research on efficacious and engaging sensors and interventions necessary in the population and public health domains. I share a series of research projects exploring and validating novel ideas on passive sensors – less dependent on subjective surveys or wearables – and subtle interventions that minimize workflow disruption. I show the promise of repurposing existing signals from computing peripherals (i.e., mouse and trackpad) or cars (steering wheel) into “sensorless” sensors and repurposing existing media as just-in-time micro-interventions that can work across multiple scenarios and populations. I discuss how these data could be used in collaboration with domain experts to study topics as varied as the interaction between stress and productivity in office workers, burnout prevention among clinical practitioners, or the prevention of depression among rural health workers. Finally, grounded in theories from neuroscience and behavioral economics, I propose the evolution of everyday “mundane” devices, such as chairs, desks, cars, or even urban lights, into adaptive and autonomous wellbeing-optimizing interventions. I close with a discussion of the research needed to systematically study ethics in pervasive technology for resilience, and wellbeing.
ABOUT
Pablo Paredes earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2015 with Prof. John Canny. He is currently a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Department and the Epidemiology and Population Health Department (by courtesy) at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He leads the Pervasive Wellbeing Technology Lab, which houses a diverse group of students from multiple departments such as computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, anthropology, neuroscience, and linguistics. Before joining the School of Medicine, Dr. Paredes was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University with Prof. James Landay. During his Ph.D. career, he held internships on behavior change and affective computing at Microsoft Research and Google. He has been an active associate editor for the Interactive, Mobile, Wireless, and Ubiquitous Technology Journal (IMWUT) and a reviewer and editor for multiple top CS and medical journals. Before 2010, he was a senior strategic manager with Intel in Sao Paulo, Brazil, a lead product manager with Telefonica in Quito, Ecuador, and an entrepreneur in his native Ecuador and, more recently, in the US. In these roles, he has had the opportunity to hire and closely evaluate designers, engineers, business people, and researchers in telecommunications and product development. During his academic career, Dr. Paredes has advised close to 40 mentees, including postdocs, Ph.D., master’s, and undergraduate students, collaborated with colleagues from multiple departments across engineering, medicine, and the humanities, and raised funding from NSF, NIH, and large multidisciplinary intramural research projects.
Hosted by: Garry Gold, M.D.
Sponsored by the PHIND Center and the Department of Radiology
PHIND & CDH Seminar: “The Invisible Future of Health Monitoring”
Join Stanford CDH and PHIND on Wednesday, June 23rd at 3:15 PM PDT to hear some of the industry’s leading experts talk about embedded sensors, longitudinal data collection, the future of remote monitoring, and real-world applications of precision health technologies. The panel will feature: Nicolas Genain, MS, Withings; John O Moore MD, PhD, Fitbit Health Solutions at Google; Pablo Paredes, PhD, MBA, MS, Stanford University; and Michael Synder, PhD, Stanford University. The discussion will be moderated by Jun (Alex) Gao, MS, Samsung America.
Zoom Webinar Details
Webinar URL: https://stanford.zoom.us/s/96984014176
Dial: US: +1 650 724 9799 or +1 833 302 1536 (Toll Free)
Webinar ID: 969 8401 4176
Passcode: 375941
3:15pm – 4:15pm: Panel Discussion
RSVP Here
Sponsored by the PHIND Center and Center for Digital Health