Symposium 2016

"Statistical Challenges and Opportunities in Precision Cancer Medicine"

November 17th and 18th, 2016

The symposium will consist of an interdisciplinary series of presentations on statistical challenges and opportunities in precision cancer medicine. Biostatisticians, computational scientists, and clinical scientists will describe recent advances in this area, ranging from practical aspects to methodological developments.

A workshop on practical design and sample size for sequential multiple assignment randomized trials (SMARTs) will lead the program followed by presentations on current issues in designing cancer clinical trials, challenges in cancer immunotherapy, recent methodological developments in cancer genomics, analysis with electronic health records, and other topics. Keynote presentations will be given by Susan Murphy and Smita Nair. There will also be a poster session.

The symposium will be of interest to clinical trial and data analysis practitioners in industry and academia as well as others who have interest in recent and future directions in clinical trials and precision medicine. We also hope the presentations and accompanying discussion will initiate future discoveries and progress in these important areas.

Agenda & Speakers

Thursday, November 17th, 2016

7:30 am - 8:15 am    Continental Breakfast
8:15 am - 10:15 am    Workshop I: Design and Sample Size for SMART Studies
    Eric B. Laber, North Carolina State University
    Michael R. Kosorok, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
10:15 am - 10:30 am    Coffee Break
10:30 am - 12:30 pm    Scientific Session I: Current Issues in Designing Cancer Clinical Trials
    Luping Zhao, AstraZeneca "Measures of Clinical Benefit in Immuno-Oncology Studies"
    Ting Wang, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "Biomarker Stratified Design Enriched by Auxiliary Biomarker" 
    Suhyun Kang, North Carolina State University "Subgroup Detection and Sample Size Calculation with Proportional Hazards Regression for Survival Data"
12:30 pm - 1:30 pm    Lunch
1:30 pm - 2:30 pm    Keynote Presentation I: Evaluating Immune-based Therapies
    Smita Nair, Duke University "Immune-based therapies"
2:30 pm - 2:45 pm    Coffee Break
2:45 pm - 4:45 pm    Scientific Session II: Recent Methodological Developments in Cancer Genomics
    Jichun Xie, Duke University "Multiple Testing of General Dependence by Quantile-Based Contingency Tables with an Application in Identifying Gene Co-expression Network Change Associated with Cancer Survival"
    Eric C. Chi, North Carolina State University "Getting High-throughput Arrays in Order with Convex Biclustering"
    Kin Yau Wong, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "Integration of Multiple High-dimensional Genomic Data Types For Survival Prediction"
4:45 pm - 5:15 pm    Speed Session: 5 minute advertisements: for poster session †
5:15 pm - 6:30 pm    Poster Session / Reception

Friday, November 18th, 2016

7:30 am - 8:15 am    Continental Breakfast
8:30 am - 10:30 am    Scientific Session III: Analysis with Electronic Health Records
    Susan Shortreed, Group Health Research Institute "Leveraging Electronic Medical Records to Better Target Suicide Prevention"
    Mary Boland, Columbia University "Electronic Health Records and Precision Medicine: Enabling Large-Scale Discoveries Using Phenome-Wide Approaches"
    Joseph G. Ibrahim, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "Network Meta-analysis for Ordinal Outcomes: Applications in Comparing Crohn's Disease Treatments"
10:30 am - 10:45 am    Coffee Break
10:45 am - 11:45 am    Keynote Presentation II: Assessing Time-Varying Causal Interactions and Treatment Effects with Applications to Mobile Health
    Susan A. Murphy, University of Michigan "Assessing Time-Varying Causal Interactions and Treatment Effects with Applications to Mobile Health" 
11:45 am - 12:00 pm    Concluding Remarks
12:00 pm    Adjourn