David Merberg to Speak at Bioinformatics Conference Jun 19-20 2014, San Diego, CA

San Diego, CA, April 30, 2014 --(PR.com)-- David Merberg, Ph.D., Bioinformatics Scientist in the Translational Bioinformatics Group at Takeda Pharmaceuticals will give a presentation titled “A Computing Infrastructure to Bridge the Gap between Preclinical and Clinical Studies” at the Bioinformatics & Pharmacogenomics: Managing and Analyzing Big Data Conference to be held in San Diego, CA on June 19-20, 2014 by GTCBio.

Translational medicine aims to expedite the development of novel therapies or medical procedures beginning with advances in basic research. Given the current information-intensive nature of pharmaceutical development, translational medicine requires a data management platform and data analysis tools that can accommodate results from both pre-clinical (animal model, cell culture) and clinical studies. Takeda Pharmaceuticals International Co. has used the tranSMART platform to build such an infrastructure. It includes data types such as cell line drug sensitivity, clinical results, gene expression, SNP, and gene copy number. Dr. Merberg will present several case studies utilizing this platform: identifying gene expression signatures in cell lines predictive of drug sensitivity, correlating gene expression and gene amplification in patient studies, and building a predictive model for drug sensitivity in patients using cell line data.

Dr. Merberg has over 25 years of experience in bioinformatics. Prior to joining Takeda, he held positions at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Cell Signaling Technology, Phylos, AstraZeneca, and Genetics Institute. At Takeda, his focus includes implementation of tranSMART and development of processes and infrastructure for managing Next Generation Sequence data. In previous positions, he led software development projects and data analysis efforts in genomics, proteomics, bio- and immunoassays, and sample management.

The Bioinformatics & Pharmacogenomics: Managing and Analyzing Big Data Conference brings together a mix of academic and industry experts from leading affiliations (such as GSK, Takeda, Johns Hopkins, UCSD, Stanford, UCLA) to cover current and relevant aspects of sequencing platforms, data integration, personal genomics and pharmacogenomics.

This conference is also part of the Nucleic Acid Summit, which consists of this and three other conferences:

4th Next-Generation Sequencing
Non-Coding RNAs and RNAi Research & Therapeutics
Nucleic Acid Research & Discovery

For more information, please visit www.gtcbio.com/bioinformatics