Transforming Medical Care with Next Generation Technologies in Genomics, Epigenomic, Stem Cell, Gene Editing Therapy and Artificial Intelligence

Research Seminar
Title: Transforming Medical Care with Next Generation Technologies in Genomics, Epigenomic, Stem Cell, Gene Editing Therapy and Artificial Intelligence
Speaker: Kang Zhang, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor, 
Co-Director, Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Center
University of California San Diego
Department of Ophthalmology, School of Medicine
Time: 13:00-14:30, May 18, 2018
Location: Youcai Deng Hall，School of Life Sciences
Host：Xiaodong Su
Abstract：
Despite decades of research, there are still many unmet medical needs and millions of patients become blind each year.  The major causes of blindness include cornral diseases, cataract, glaucoma and retinal diseases.  Age-related macular degeenration (AMD) is the most common cause of visual impairment of the elderly in the developed countries.   AMD is a multi-factorial disease that involves interaction of genetic and environmental influences.  Allelic variants of genes encoding members of the alternative complement pathway including CFH, CFI and C3 strongly influence an individual’s risk of developing AMD.  We and others demonstrated that HTRA1 locus at chromosome 10q26 also strongly impact AMD risk (Yang et al, Sceince, 2006). We showed that variations in CFH, HTRA1, and C3 contribute to a majority of the genetic risk for AMD and are strongly predictive of advanced AMD and bilateralarity (Chen et al, Arch Oph, 2010).  Smoking is the strongest idnetifiable environmental factor that interacts with CFH genotypes to impact AMD risk. Epigenetics contributes to  aging and age related diseases (Hannum et al, Mol Cell, 2013).  Stem cell research shows great promise in modeling disease in vitro and treating blinding degenerative diseases of the eye including (Zhang and Ding, NEJM, 2010, Ouang, et al Nature, 2014, Lin et al, Nature 2016 ).  3D printing of retina and cornea and nanotechnology offer an exciting treatment options (Gou et al Nat Comm 2014, Ho, et al, Nature 2015). Gene editing and therapy can provide new treatment for untreatable diseases (Kei et al Nature 2016, Zhu, Cell res. 2017, Lu and Zhang, NEJM, 2018).  The recent advance in genetics, epigenetics and stem cell therapy of eye will allow identification the high risk patients for customized intervention and treatment in the near future (Zhang, et al, Nature Review Drug Discovery, 2012; Zhao, et al, Nature 2015; Xu et al, Nature Materials, 2017).  Artificial intelligence has potential to revolutionize medical care.  We have developed an AI system to identify medical diagnoses and treatable diseases by image based deep learning (Kermany et al, Cell, 2018). 
Welcome！