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UID:0-1752@hmc.edu
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260213T110000
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URL:https://www.hmc.edu/calendar/events/cs-colloquium-sarah-spencer-novart
 is/
SUMMARY:CS Colloquium: Sarah Spencer\, Novartis
DESCRIPTION:“Single Cells\, Many Paths: The Role of Data Science in Drug 
 Discovery”\nWe face a challenging reality that it takes $3.2 billion and
  12 years on average to develop a new medicine that is approved for sale i
 n the United States. Computational research holds promise to improve our a
 bility to make medicines – through predictions of toxicity\, generative 
 design of molecules\, mining public research\, among many other examples. 
 In this presentation I’ll focus on data science in the very first step o
 f drug discovery: identifying disease-associated genes to drug. Leveraging
  genome-wide data from single cells\, we use stochastic optimization and d
 eep neural networks to create cell atlases. These cell atlases can be used
  to identify novel cell types\, infer disease-associated cell state change
 s\, and predict the effects of gene perturbations via transfer learning. W
 e applied these techniques to identify anti-inflammatory genes for progres
 sive multiple sclerosis\, and further characterized the disease with dynam
 ic spatial imaging from mouse tissue sections. I’ll conclude with commen
 ts on data science in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry – what car
 eers look like\, how to train toward this field\, and the great opportunit
 ies for computational scientists to reimagine the paths towards innovative
  medicines for patients.\nSpeaker Bio\nSarah Spencer received a B.A. in bi
 ology from Washington University in St. Louis in 2009\, and then pursued a
  PhD from MIT in computational and systems biology from 2011–2017. For t
 he next three years\, she joined CRISPR Therapeutics\, researching gene ed
 iting and supporting the first clinical trials using CRISPR technology. Sh
 e spent a year at Alltrna\, a start-up engineering RNA drugs\, prior to jo
 ining Novartis in 2022. As an associate director and senior principal scie
 ntist at Novartis\, Sarah leads a computational research team focused on t
 he very earliest stages of drug discovery.
CATEGORIES:Faculty,Staff,Students
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