Rapid Diagnosis of Any Illness Through Genomics

CEC (健華社) and Northridge Public Library present a lecture in Popular medical science (in English)
“Rapid Diagnosis of Any Illness Through Genomics - Cutting Edge Advances in Clinical Medicine”

Speaker:
M.D.-Ph.D Charles Chiu, UCSF Professor of Medicine.
Expert on infectious diseases. An undisputed leader in the field reported by TIME (photo). Grown up in the San Fernando Valley, attending public schools through college and medical school.

A Lecture understandable to laymen to cover amazing applications on:

• infection diagnosis on hospital patients;
• surveillance of the global Ebola and Zika virus epidemics;
• supporting future lunar and Mars missions on space station;
• and much more.

Time:
3pm, Saturday, March 24, 2018

Place:
Northridge Public Library, 9051 Darby Ave (at Nordhoff), 818-886-3640.
All are welcome. No reservation required. Capacity audience expected. Come early for good seating.

​LECTURE ABSTRACT:
Metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) is an emerging technology that can enable detection of any pathogen – virus, bacteria, fungus, or parasite – in a single test. Here I will describe clinical applications of the mNGS approach for (1) diagnosis of infections in hospitalized patients, (2) public health surveillance of the global Ebola and Zika virus epidemics, and (3) sequencing in space aboard the International Space Station and in support of future cis-lunar and Mars missions. We will also discuss ongoing efforts to apply machine learning and deep learning strategies – used recently by Google’s AlphaGo artificial intelligence (AI) program to master Chess and Go – to diagnose infections by leveraging large amounts of clinical sequencing data, and present the use of a portable sequencer (the MinION sequencer by Oxford Nanopore Technologies) to screen for the next outbreak that may arise from the developing world. In the near future, we may be able to rapidly and accurately identify any illness, infectious or non-infectious, thus radically transforming our approach to the diagnosis, management, and treatment of patients with acute infectious diseases.

For more information:
http://nextgendiagnostics.ucsf.edu
http://chiulab.wpengine.com
http://chiulab.ucsf.edu