WMIC 2015: Precision Medicine…Visualized

CULVER CITY, Calif., Feb. 19, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Serving as the largest international forum for cutting edge research designed to speed the discovery of more and better treatments for cancer and other diseases, the World Molecular Imaging Society (WMIS) will hold its eighth annual congress in Honolulu, Hawaii September 2-5, 2015.  The theme of the World Molecular Imaging Congress (WMIC) 2015 is Precision Medicine, Visualized, which embodies current and future roles of molecular imaging in basic science, translational medicine and healthcare.

The WMIC will feature more than 160 oral presentations and more than 900 scientific poster presentations from world-renowned institutions from around the globe with keynote sessions on precision medicine and co-clinical trials. The WMIC Scientific Program Committee is currently accepting abstract submissions in the following emphases and categories: Chemistry & Imaging Probes; First In-Human & Clinical Studies; Preclinical Cell & Living Tissue Studies; Preclinical in vivo Studies; and Technology & Software Development. The deadline to submit abstracts is Monday, March 2, 2015.  For more information about WMIC 2015, visit http://www.wmis.org/meetings/.

"We commend President Obama for drawing attention to the critical importance of precision medicine and the need for the expansion of research to speed discovery," stated Dr. Jason Lewis, Professor and Vice Chair for Research, Emily Tow Jackson Chair at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and President of the WMIS.  Precision medicine is an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person. While significant advances in precision medicine have been made for select cancers, the practice is not currently in use for most diseases. Many efforts are underway to help make precision medicine the norm rather than the exception. To accelerate the pace, President Obama unveiled the Precision Medicine Initiative — a bold new enterprise to revolutionize medicine and generate the scientific evidence needed to move the concept of precision medicine into every day clinical practice.

Molecular imaging excels at visualizing and quantifying the cellular and molecular underpinnings of diseases on a patient-by-patient basis and provides new ways to detect disease at early, potentially curable stages, identify patients likely to respond to certain treatments, and predict response to therapy early. As such, molecular imaging has tremendous potential to advance precision medicine in many critical human diseases. Moreover, the WMIS recognizes that the future success of precision medicine depends upon molecular imaging.

"As the world's leading forum for the presentation of groundbreaking research in molecular imaging, probe chemistry, and quantitative biology, WMIC 2015 will feature the newest discoveries certain to guide precision medicine initiatives," said WMIC Program Chair Dr. H. Charles Manning, Associate Professor of Radiology and Director of the Vanderbilt University Center for Molecular Probes. "Exemplifying the high creativity brought to molecular imaging by scientists from many research disciplines and from around the world, the meeting will feature seven plenary sessions and 10 spotlight sessions with two highlighted presentations on the future of molecular Imaging from WMIS Fellows."

Highlights of the plenary sessions and key research to be presented at the World Molecular Imaging Congress, includes: 

Plenary Presentations

• Chien Ho, Ph.D., Professor, Biological Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, will be delivering the plenary talk: An Evolution from In-vivo Cell Tracking by MRI to Better Drug Delivery.
• Zena Werb, Ph.D., Professor, University of California, San Francisco, will be delivering the plenary talk: Intravital Imaging Reveals Properties of Cancer Progression, Mestastasis and Response to Therapy.
• Elizabeth Morris, M.D., Professor, Radiology, Weill Cornell Medical College and Chief of the Breast Imaging Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, will be delivering the plenary talk on Breast Imaging.
• Jon-Kar Zubieta, M.D., Professor, University of Michigan, will deliver a plenary on imaging in neuroscience has been chosen to deliver the Jorge Barrio Lecture for Advances in Clinical Research talk: Endogenous Opioid Systems and Resiliency in Humans

Fellows Forum

• David Piwnica-Worms --  Riddle me this, When is a mouse a man? The future of molecular imaging in refining and accelerating animal models.
• Sanjiv (Sam) Gambhir -- The future of molecular imaging in early detection: When do patients cross the biology to pathobiology threshold, and how do we see, sense or know?

Spotlight Sessions

• Women's Imaging: This session will be an overview of the clinical aspects of breast and gynecologic cancers and how precision medicine affects both the imaging and treatment of these malignancies. For both imaging and treatment, biology revealed by molecular imaging will often trump anatomy.
• Molecular Imaging Based Companion Diagnostics: A key requirement for precision medicine is how to identify patients who are likely to respond to a particular drug. The spotlight session will focus on the challenges faced by drug development and how molecular imaging based approaches can help patient stratification in real time by identifying patients who are likely to respond to a given drug.
• Metabolism: Metabolic reprogramming is considered to be a hallmark of cancer and a potential source of novel targets for diagnostic imaging and therapy in cancer. Imaging informative aspects of metabolism reports on biologically and clinically important features of tumor biology, enabling both prognostic counseling and tailoring of therapeutic regimens. Metabolic imaging therefore has the potential to provide a new dimension of precision medicine. A current challenge in molecular imaging is to develop methods to image the large and growing number of metabolic activities shown to function in tumor initiation or progression. This session will discuss our current understanding of the relationship between oncogenic signaling and tumor metabolism, and the use of emerging techniques in molecular imaging to illuminate key aspects of tumor metabolism in mice and humans. 
• Radiogenomics: Radiomics is based on the assumption that images are data. It describes the process of converting images into mineable data. By comparing individual patient data to pre-exiting databases, radiomics information can be used to develop patient-specific decision support tools. Furthermore, complementary innovations in next generation sequencing and radiomics that allow spatial quantification of tumor phenotypic heterogeneity/clonal composition and its change during drug treatment will provide the basis for improved treatment outcome and will be the fundamental drivers for the future of personalized oncology.

ABOUT WORLD MOLECULAR IMAGING SOCIETY
The WMIS is dedicated to developing and promoting translational research through multimodality molecular imaging. The education and abstract-driven WMIC is the annual meeting of the WMIS and is held in conjunction with partner societies including the European Society for Molecular Imaging (ESMI) and the Federation of Asian Societies for Molecular Imaging (FASMI). WMIC provides a unique setting for scientists and clinicians with very diverse backgrounds to interact, present, and follow cutting-edge advances in the rapidly expanding field of molecular imaging that impacts nearly every biomedical discipline.  Industry exhibits at the congress included corporations who have created the latest advances in preclinical and clinical imaging approaches and equipment, providing a complete molecular imaging educational technology showcase.

For more information: www.wmis.org

CONTACT: LISA BAIRD                                                              
PHONE: 617-378-7682              
E-MAIL: [email protected]

SOURCE World Molecular Imaging Society

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