Annual Wharton Alumni Healthcare Conference
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Please join us for this all-day event with great topics and numerous national healthcare leaders confirmed as speakers
Saturday, October 22, 2011
8:15am – 6:00pm
“At the intersection of policy, implementation, and innovation in the healthcare industry”
Jon M. Huntsman Hall
3730 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-3615
POTOMAC FALLS, Va., June 8, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — TessArae®, LLC, a privately held company, today announced that it has appointed Tom Richards as its new President. Dr. Richards has held faculty positions at Stanford University Medical Center and UCSF Medical Center, where he currently practices as an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine. Richards is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and Yale College. Prior to attending medical school, Dr. Richards was an investment banker in the mergers & acquisitions departments of several firms, including Lazard Freres, UBS Securities and SGCowen. He has transactional experience in a wide variety of industries and products, including capital raising, leveraged buyouts and public mergers. From 2006 until 2010, he served on the Board of Directors of Cowen Group, a publicly-traded healthcare and technology investment bank where he was a member of the Audit and Corporate Governance Committees.
Come and visit us at booth 120 at the 2011 ACMG meeting in Vancouver, BC Canada. Learn about our GeneCipher™ Assay for genetic disease testing.
More information at the ACMG Conference Website.
Dr. Matthew Lorence, Vice President, Marketing and Sales for Tessarae, LLC will chair the Growth in Personalized Cancer Diagnostics session of the Cancer Molecular Markers program at Molecular Med Tri-Con 2011. The session will be Friday February 25, 2011 at the Moscone North Convention Center, San Francisco, CA at 8:30am.
18th International Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference – CHI’s flagship event
ATTEND. DISCOVER. APPLY. The one scientific event for cutting-edge research, trends and analysis. The future holds great promise for molecular medicine, however the demand for results today is ever mounting, from both patients and businesses alike. The Molecular Med Tri-Con is the place to find the tools to turn ‘someday’ into ‘now’.
Click here for more details: http://bit.ly/fWbACT
TessArae® was awarded a contract from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health for the purchase of DNA instrumentation, supplies, with support for validation, bioinformatics integration and training. TessArae is a private company that designs and delivers the most cost-effective, highly multiplexed, targeted DNA sequencing diagnostics available on the market today, providing solutions for two key markets: microbial detection and genetic testing.
Expanding its activities in the genetic testing market, TessArae has partnered with an Israeli firm to design a resequencing microarray that can detect specific disease-causing mutations in 11 cancer genes.
Kazerin-based Galil Genetic Analysis will next month launch the Affymetrix-made chip, according to officials from both companies.
GGA CEO Yoram Plotsky told BioArray News this week that the two firms have recently finished developing the assay, called the OncoGenetics RDMGGA 1.0 Re-sequencing Chip. It is designed to enable researchers to simultaneously sequence 11 genes and detect more than 3,300 known disease-causing mutations in one test.
Genes included in the test are BRCA1, BRCA2, APC, MUTYH, MLH1, MSH2, MSH6, TP53, PTEN, P16, and KRAS. The chip is in the final stage of validation and will become available next month in Israel, Plotsky said.
Read the full article on the GenomeWeb Website.
Dr. Klaus Schafer, President and CEO of TessArae, has been selected to serve on the board of directors of the Virginia Biotechnology Association.
The Virginia Biotechnology Association (VABIO), formed in 1992, is the premier statewide non-profit trade association representing the life sciences industry in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Nearly 200 member organizations have joined forces to make VABIO an effective advocate for the biopharmaceutical and device industries before federal, state and local policy-makers.
TessArae will be in attendance at the 60th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics meeting in Washington, DC on November 2-6, 2010. If you would like to speak to us, please contact us at: http://www.tessarae.com/contact.html.
The TessArae Resequencing Diagnostic Microarray technology will also be discussed in a poster by Galil Genetic Analysis (GGA):
518/T A Novel resequencing Diagnostic Microarray: RDMGGA1.0 chip, customized to diagnose mutations in patients with Breast, Ovarian, Colon, Skin and Multiple Cancers. D. Bercovich1, y. Plotsky2, T. Guy2, S. Allon- Shalev3, AM. Lichanska4, LA. Borsuk4, C. Tibbetts4. 1) Human Genetic Lab, Tel Hai Academic College, Israel; 2) Galil Genetic Analysais (GGA), Kazarin 12900, Israel; 3) The Institute for Genetics, Ha’Emek Medical Center, Afula 18101, Israel; 4) TessArae, Potomac Falls, VA 20165 USA.
Despite the remarkable progress in identifying the genes causing the most common inherited cancers, current diagnostic algorithms do not incorporate all genes and known mutation analysis in the clinical evaluation of affected patients and relatives. In addition, the large genes size and the lack of highly predominant mutational hotspots for most populations frequently make mutation detection in these cancer genes outstandingly challenging, which is costly and time consuming. The interpretation is even more complex as a result of poor studies of gene-gene interactions and genotype-phenotype relationships. To fulfill this technological gap, we developed a new custo- mized resequencing gene chip (RDMGGA1.0) that is focused on 11 genes: BRCA1, BRCA2, APC, MUTYH, MLH1, MSH2, MSH6, TP53, PTEN, P16 and KRAS simultaneously, in a single assay, with high call rate and accuracy. probes were designed to identify each base for all exons, 20 bases of intronic sequence bordering exons in the main tiles, and 3320 most frequent mutations were subtiled. The array uses the Affymetrix resequencing plat- form. Novel software was developed by TessArae for the data analysis. Amplicons were hybridized to the chip, and nucleotide detection was vali- dated by standard capillary sequencing methods. Hybridization of amplicons with the chip produced high nucleotide sequence readout for all 11 genes in a single assay, with an automated call rate of over 98%. The accuracy of nucleotide calls was 99.99% when compared with capillary sequencing. The new resequencing chip enables efficient analysis of 11 genes with a high call rate and accuracy in one assay, and identifies disease-causing mutations.
TessArae Targeted Resequencing at GeneDx Provides More Comprehensive Analysis, Lower Cost, and Faster Results
GeneDx is a premier genetic testing company that specializes in rare hereditary disorders. In 2008 the scientific team determined that they needed to update their testing method for Noonan Syndrome to enhance their competitive position in the market, and engaged in discussions with TessArae to explore an alternative targeted resequencing technology to their conventional (Sanger) sequencing approach.
GeneDx’s Challenge
In 2008 GeneDx was facing a shifting competitive landscape in which new companies were introducing tests for Noonan Syndrome that pushed price and turn-around-time boundaries. GeneDx wanted to maintain its leadership position in this market, so it evaluated new technologies to replace the existing test, which analyzed 45 amplicons by conventional (Sanger) sequencing. Conventional (Sanger) sequencing had several shortcomings:
• Expensive to sequence and analyze 45 amplicons
• Long time from Sample to Results
• Required very clean amplicons
The H1N1 epidemic has illuminated the need for new rapid molecular tests. Opportunities for point-of-care have arisen around the need for faster turnaround time and more sophisticated assays that differentiate strain types of emerging agents and that generate reliable results. This promises to improve healthcare delivery and make patient management more efficient with accurate diagnosis. This conference will provide a forum to discuss how the tests will be reimbursed. Newer applications for point-of-care testing will also be explored that branch out from traditional markets and have the potential to greatly impact treatment. New developments in affordable and innovative options that represent cost savings in healthcare delivery will be given priority status.
Scientific Advisory Board:
Shuqi Chen, Ph.D., CEO, IQuum, Inc.
Harry Glorikian, Managing Partner, Scientia Advisors
Jorge A. León, Ph.D., President, Leomics Consulting
Thomas Li, Ph.D., Senior Director, Technology Management, Chief Technology Office, Roche Diagnostics, Pleasanton
Matthew Lorence, Ph.D., M.B.A., Vice President, Marketing and Sales, Tessarae, LLC
Boris Nikolic, M.D., Senior Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Valerie Ng, Ph.D., M.D., President-Elect, ACMC Medical Staff; Chairman, Pathology; Director, Clinical Laboratory, Alameda County Medical Center/Highland General Hospital
Hakan Sakul, Ph.D., Senior Director and Global Head, Diagnostics and Oncology Leads, Molecular Medicine Group, Pfizer Global R