Richard Doll Society Conference 2019 explores genes and big data
On the 26th October 2019, the Richard Doll Society hosted 80 delegates for its annual conference, “Personalised Medicine: Your Genes vs. Big Data”.
The Richard Doll Society is the college Medical Society, run by clinical medical students. It organises a number of events each year, including dinners, clinical skills teaching and the annual conference, with various high-profile speakers. The annual conference is the biggest event of the year for the RDS and is open to members of the university, medical students and doctors from across the country.
The day started with an opening address from Professor Sir Mark Caulfield, the Chief Scientist for Genomics England. Professor Sir Caulfield discussed the challenges and solutions that he encountered during the delivery of the 100,000 genomes project and discussed the implications of this project for the NHS Genomics Service.
Following Professor Sir Caulfield’s talk, Dr Jason Torres gave a talk on the application of personalised medicine and genomic techniques to understanding complex polygenetic disorders such as type 2 diabetes mellitus – “waking up from the geneticist’s nightmare”. He explored the different genomic techniques that can be used to elucidate the genes and pathways involved in the pathophysiology of type 2 DM and discussed the work of the Oxford Centre for Personalised Medicine, where he is Junior Research Fellow.
A much-needed break for refreshments gave all of the conference guests chance to reflect on the stimulating first session.
Dr Lilian Lam, EMBO research fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology delivered the next address. She argued the case for considering the microbiome in personalised medicine, succinctly outlining the current state of research into microbiome’s role in health and disease. She challenged the status quo of interventions personalised to individual patients, suggesting that we should personalise to their microbiome.
Over a delicious lunch in the Radcliffe Observatory, guests had the opportunity to submit questions to the ethics panel. These questions helped launch the ethical debate and it was wonderful to see the audience getting so involved. The panel was chaired by Philip Baker (Vice-President of the RDS) who did well to control the fervent debate. The panel was led by Dr Federica Lucivero, Senior Research in Data and Ethics at the Ethox centre. She was joined by Dr Gabrielle Samuel, a social scientist from King’s College London, and Professor John Mattick, Senior Research Fellow with a Visiting Professorial Fellowship at Green Templeton College. The panel discussed a number of ethical issues including whether genetic data should be controlled by individuals or health care provides, genetic privacy in the context of criminal investigation, and dealing with incidental findings.
The final talk was our keynote address from Professor David Kerr, an Oxford-based oncologist and former president of the European Society of Medical Oncology. He talked about advances in colorectal cancer treatment due to the discovery of molecular biomarkers which allowed stratification of patient groups to increase the proportion of patients having a good response to treatment and reduce the number of side effects by sparing patients who would gain no benefit from further treatment.
Author: Philip Baker, Vice-President, Richard Doll Society and 5th-year Medicine student
If you have any questions or ideas for the society, please contact richarddollsociety@gmail.com
