Events

The number of gene-expression data sets available in public databases has climbed rapidly over the past decade, allowing researchers to spot disease trends without doing time-intensive experiments in the laboratory. The “big data” deluge promises to accelerate the process of understanding disease while driving down the costs of developing new therapies.

To underscore the wealth of opportunities for scientists who can mine these continuously growing databases in innovative ways, Stanford Medicine and Oxford University are sponsoring a three-day conference next month on big data’s role in biomedicine. The event will be held May 22-24 at the School of Medicine’s Li Ka Shing Center for Learning & Knowledge and will feature keynote speeches from Anne Wojcicki, CEO and co-founder of the consumer-genomics company 23andMe, and David Ewing Duncan, author of Experimental Man. In addition, attendees will hear from more than two dozen speakers representing large information-technology corporations, startups, venture-capital firms and academia.

In a release, Stanford systems-medicine chief Atul Butte, MD, PhD, who is the conference’s scientific program committee chair, commented on the motivation for hosting the conference and what participants will learn at the event:

We’re bringing together people from academia, industry, government and foundations who want to learn more about how big data can drive innovation for a healthier world… We expect that attendees will walk away from this with a strong understanding of the latest tools and technologies available for studying and using big data in biomedicine, of where the unmet medical needs are and how they can be addressed with these approaches, and of what the tractable next steps are that they can take to become innovators.

Additional program information and registration details are available on the conference website.

Previously: Mining data from patients’ charts to identify harmful drug reactions, Strength in numbers: Harnessing public gene data to answer a diverse range of research questions, Mining medical discoveries from a mountain of ones and zeroes, The data deluge: A report from Stanford Medicine magazine, Stanford’s Atul Butte discusses outsourcing research online at TEDMED and Health-care experts discuss opportunities and challenges of mining ‘big data’ in health care
Photo by Dwight Eschliman

A founding mother of the breast cancer advocacy movement, Susan Love, MD, will kick off this year’s Stanford Women’s Health Forum with a talk, “A Future Without Breast Cancer: Where Are We and What Can We Do,” at the May 15 event.

Love is a clinical professor of surgery at UC Los Angeles and president of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation. After dedicating years of her life to patient advocacy, she became a patient herself when she was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia last year; she recently shared her experiences as a patient on a New York Times blog.

In addition to Love, the free community event will feature experts from throughout the School of Medicine. From our release:

Previous health forums have been “an opportunity for people in the community to learn about important medical issues affecting women and about the groundbreaking research done at Stanford,” said Lynn Westphal, MD, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology… “At this year’s forum, anyone who has been touched by cancer, either personally or through a loved one, will benefit from the discussions.”

Other speakers at the forum will discuss a variety of topics, including breast cancer diagnosis, risk and surgery; headaches during sexual activity; contraception; stress and survivorship; lung cancer in nonsmokers; cancer-related sleep problems; weight-loss diets; colorectal screening and cancer; facial rejuvenation; and sunscreen and skin cancer prevention. Among the Stanford speakers will be headache specialist Robert Cowan, MD, clinical professor of neurology and neurological sciences; oncology professor Mark Pegram, MD, who directs Stanford’s breast cancer program; and nutrition researcher Christopher Gardner, PhD, associate professor of medicine.

The forum is being presented by the Stanford Center for Health Research on Women & Sex Differences in Medicine (known as the WSDM Center). Registration for the half-day event is now open.

Previously: A call to advance research on women’s health issues, Exploring sex differences in the brain, Stanford 2011 Women’s Health Forum videos available on the web, Women’s Health Forum videos online and Nancy Snyderman speaks at Stanford Women’s Health Forum

Tomorrow, around 140 students from ten local high schools will arrive on the Stanford campus to participate in our annual Med School 101 event.

Designed to expose high-school students to medicine and related fields, the event is organized by the medical school’s Office of Communication & Public Affairs and sponsored by Stanford Hospital & Clinics. At the day-long gathering, students will attend sessions at the Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge on a range of medical and scientific topics. They’ll hear from some of the country’s top experts and get the opportunity to engage in hands-on activities such as performing surgery on simulated patients.

We’ll be live tweeting sessions from Josef Parvizi, MD, PhD, associate professor of neurology and neurological sciences; Gilbert Chu, MD, PhD, professor of oncology; Sakti Srivastava, MD, associate professor of surgery, and other event happenings throughout the day. You can follow the coverage beginning at 9 AM Pacific time on the @SUMedicine feed or by using the hashtag #SUMed101.

Previously: Med school: Up close and personal, A quick primer on getting into medical school, Teens interested in medicine encouraged to “think beyond the obvious” and High-school students get a taste of med school
Photo by Norbert von der Groeben

As a New York Times’ science and health reporter, Pam Belluck has written about many different health-related subjects - fetal surgery, hospital delirium, Alzheimer’s disease and the donation of HIV-infected organs. Next week, as part of the Stanford Health Policy Forum series, she’ll discuss her work in a conversation with Paul Costello, chief communications officer at the medical school.

“Health Care in Practice: A Journalist’s Perspective,” will take place on March 20. A flyer (.pdf) for the free event offers more details.

Belluck joined the Times in 1995 as a general assignment reporter on the metropolitan desk, and she began covering health and science in 2009. She is also author of Island Practice, a book about an eccentric doctor and the adventures and challenges of his community on the island of Nantucket.

Sparks flew at a symposium hosted by the Stanford Center for Health Research on Women & Sex Differences in Medicine, which I attended yesterday. One invited speaker -Louann Brizendine, MD, of the University of California at San Francisco - is the author of a couple of books titled The Male Brain and The Female Brain. Another invited speaker - neuroscientist Daphna Joel, PhD, who’d flown in from the University of Tel Aviv, in Israel - emphatically maintained that there is no such thing as a “male” brain or a “female” brain. “What we know,” she said bluntly, “is that males have brains and females have brains.”

Whatever the semantics of that debate, two things are pretty clear any way you slice it. First, male and female brains are mostly alike. Second, there are measurable and meaningful differences in what goes on inside male versus female brains. As another neuroscientist, UCLA’s Art Arnold, PhD, put it: “Every cell in a female’s brain expresses a set of genes that the cells in a male’s brain express at much lower levels, if at all.”

Adding heft to Arnold’s comment was a presentation by Nirao Shah, MD, PhD, of UCSF. The neuroanatomist showcased research in his lab that had pinpointed specific genes whose activity levels differed significantly in the brains of male and female mice. Many of these genes, he noted, have human analogs that have been implicated in alcoholism, autism, breast and prostate cancers, and more. By conducting rigorous experiments with mice in which one or another of such genes had been put out of commission, Shah and his colleagues were able to tease out the behavioral consequences of specific genes’ inactivation. For example, knocking out a particular gene in female mouse moms results in a massive dimunition in their willingness to defend their nests from intruders - a maternal mandate that normal female mice observe rigorously - yet has no other observable effect on their maternal or sexual behavior. Torpedoing a different gene radically reduces Minnie Mouse’s mating mood; but the Mickeys in which this gene has been trashed “are completely normal, as far as we can tell,” Shah said.

The upshot: Yes, there are significant differences in behavior (and therefore in brain action) and in gene activity in the brain cells of males and females. Those of male and female mice, that is. What about humans’?

Well, nobody was talking about knocking any genes out of people to see if the men indulge in fewer barroom brawls and the women start laughing off their babies’ cries of distress. But there are certainly some strong hints of medically significant differences: The ratio of men to women with autism run somewhere in the neighborhood of 8:1 or even 16:1. Depression is twice as common among women as among men - but only between menarche and menopause. Alzheimer’s disease abounds more in women, even after taking into consideration women’s greater longevity (itself a medically important difference), as does autoimmunity. On the other hand, Parkinson’s and schizophrenia preferentially affect men. There seems to be more at work here than the simple “absorption of gender stereotypes,” and it’s good to see hardcore biologists attacking the problem with all the scientific rigor at their disposal.

Let’s not call the whole thing off.

Previously: A call to advance research on women’s health issues
Photo by namuit

Local readers, mark your calendar for a free, public event on the medical school campus on March 6. “seXX & seXY: A Dialogue on the Female Brain and the Male Brain,” will feature a variety of experts discussing sex differences in the brain and covering such topics as autism, Alzheimer’s disease and obesity. The event marks the launch of the Stanford Center for Health Research on Women and Sex Differences in Medicine, which will encourage scientists to study sex differences in cells, tissues, animal models and human health outcomes across the life span, with an emphasis on women’s health.

As I wrote in a story on the new endeavor:

The center will unite the many Stanford faculty members conducting health research on women and sex differences in basic biology and the influence of gender on disease. Some researchers, for example, are examining a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease that may be seen in women only. Others are studying how to tailor diagnostic tests and treatments for women, as well as men, with cardiovascular disease. The center hopes to promote further research in all medical disciplines, as well as identify clinical areas (such as health issues in gay, lesbian and transgender people) that need to be recognized in order to provide health equity for everyone.

…

[Directors Marcia Stefanick, PhD, and Lynn Westphal, MD,] felt strongly that the center’s emphasis should not be solely on women, but also on their Y-chromosomed (and gender variant) counterparts. Women have better outcomes than men in many disease categories, but worse outcomes in others. Investigating why, for example, men have more all-cause cancers and more heart disease, and die at higher rates than women in every age category until age 80 and older, could be of clinical benefit to both sexes, they say, as will learning why women suffer more from autoimmune diseases and other illnesses.

“Understanding the reasons would shed light on diseases and allow us to tailor treatments,” said Westphal.

The March 6 symposium (for which people can register here) will be followed by a general women’s health forum on May 15; the events are designed to interest both a lay and professional audience.

Photo by Hey Paul Studios

A new study from Stanford molecular and cellular physiologist Axel Brunger, PhD, and colleagues clears up a controversy in the neuroscience community by pinpointing a critical feature of the mechanism by which our nerve cells manage to talk to one another in something approaching real time. If that conversation were stuck in slo-mo, the distinction between brain and blob would vanish.

While the study is noteworthy in itself, the fact that its findings appear in the first issue of eLife, a newly launched open-access journal, rather than Science or Nature is also significant. As a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator with close to 250 peer-reviewed publications under his belt, Brunger is hardly hard-up for high-rated scientific outlets. But his experience, he tells me, has made it clear that “our peer-reviewed publication system is in a state of crisis.”

It seems other scientists feel the same. A University of Montreal study published in November concluded that the most prestigious journals were publishing fewer and fewer of the most frequently cited articles.

“For many ‘high-impact factor’ journals, initial triaging and final decisions aren’t made by active scientists,” says Brunger. “That’s not to say that these journals don’t publish excellent work, but the criteria for acceptance seem rather arbitrary and random.”

The brainchild of three heavyweight research-funding entities – HHMI, the Max Planck Society, and Wellcome Trust – eLife is not only open-access, but publication-immediately-upon-acceptance and embargo-free. (Not to mention just plain free, for both authors and readers.) Brunger’s is one of a score or so of research papers selected for eLife’s first issue, which published today.

Photo by mikebaird

More than a third of adults in the United States are obese, and obesity rates for children in the country have tripled since 1980. In an effort to foster conversation about the issue, the School of Medicine is hosting a public forum on Nov. 27 on the driving forces behind the nation’s weight gain, including food policies and diet trends.

A flyer (.pdf) for the free event offers more details about the guest speakers:

Acclaimed science writer Gary Taubes will join in conversation with Christopher Gardner, PhD, director of Nutrition Studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. Gardner is actively involved in research focused on dietary intervention trials designed to test the effects of food components or food patterns on chronic disease risk factors, including body weight, blood lipids, and inflammatory markers. Taubes has argued that our diet’s overemphasis on certain kinds of carbohydrates, has led directly to the obesity epidemic we face today – which immediately stirred controversy and acclaim among academics, journalists and writers alike.

The discussion will be moderated by Paul Costello, the medical school’s chief communications officer, and end with an audience Q&A.

Previously: Four states examine their cultural environment to reduce obesity rates, Examining why instilling healthy eating and exercise habits in children may not prevent obesity later in life, Stanford researcher fights obesity out on the farm and Obesity in kids: A growing and dangerous epidemic
Photo by Jodi Green

Nearly 50 years after the first Surgeon General warnings linking smoking to cancer appeared on cigarettes packages, millions of Americans have managed to break the addictive habit. And while a decrease in the numbers of smokers provides great reason to celebrate, lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death. The damage that smoking does to the lungs still means a far higher risk of developing cancer.

Unfortunately, lung cancer is most often not diagnosed until its later stages, which decreases the chance of successful treatment. However, new screening guidelines for earlier lung cancer detection were approved this spring by the American College of Chest Physicians and the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

On Thursday, the same day that the American Cancer Society sponsors its annual Great American Smokeout, Stanford lung cancer experts will be on hand at a free public panel to address the new screening guidelines and the latest approaches to lung cancer treatment. The panel will include:

• Daya Upadhyay, MD, a pulmonary specialist focused on lung nodules, early lung cancer diagnosis and the impact of smoking and environment on lung health
• Joseph Shrager, MD, chief of Stanford’s Division of Thoracic Surgery and expert in video-assisted thoracic surgery for early stage lung cancer
• Heather Wakelee, MD, a medical oncologist with expertise in molecularly-targeted treatment of lung cancer who heads the thoracic oncology clinical research group
• Billy W. Loo Jr, MD, PhD, program leader of thoracic radiation oncology and an expert inimage-guided stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) for early stage lung cancer

If you are in the Bay Area, and you or someone you know is a current or former heavy smoker, consider attending the panel. The event will be held from 7 - 8:30 PM at the Francis C. Arrillaga Alumni Center on the Stanford campus. Seating is limited; to register call (650) 498-7826.

Previously: Lung cancer can affect anyone, Lung cancer rates declining in the U.S., Study shows secondhand smoke a serious health threat to casino workers, patrons and Study suggests smoking may cause the body to turn against its own helpful bacteria
Photo by Fernando Mafra

Food Day - Oct. 24 - is fast approaching. Food researchers here will be celebrating by attending Food Summit 3, a two-part event for scientists, community activists and members of the general public with an interest in food systems research.

During the day, there will be a symposium for Stanford researchers and members of community-based food organizations. The agenda includes, among other things, presentations on three food-related research projects that grew out of Stanford-community partnerships started at last year’s Food Summit.

The evening features a forum for the general public that begins with a presentation by speaker, author and activist John Robbins, who is perhaps best known for his 1987 book “Diet for a New America.” His presentation will be followed by a panel discussion entitled “Farm Bill or Food Bill?” that features food activists from here and around the Bay Area.

I wrote more about the Stanford event in a release:

“Our longer-term goal is to build a food-systems research center on campus,” said Christopher Gardner, PhD, the associate professor of medicine who is organizing the summit. The engagement of all seven Stanford schools in a variety of food-related research projects gives Stanford a unique niche in addressing local, national and global food problems, Gardner said. “Of 7 billion people on the planet, a billion are hungry and nearly a billion are overweight or obese,” he said. “There’s enough food to go around, but how do you produce it and how do you distribute it? Those are systems issues in growing a sustainable-food movement that Stanford may be able to help solve.”

Both portions of the Food Summit are free; registration is available online.

Previously: Stanford expert discusses motivating Americans to make better nutritional choices, Food, glorious food: Stanford’s first food summit and Stanford researchers seek interdisciplinary solutions to food-related problems