Real Time Conference Coverage: Advancing Precision Medicine Conference, Afternoon Session October 4 2025
Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, PhD
Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intellegence will be covering this conference LIVE over X.com at
using the following meeting hashtags
#AdvancingPM #precisionmedicine #WINSYMPO2025
1:40 – 2:30
AI in Precision Medicine
- AI will help reduce time for drug development especially in early phase of discovery but eventually help in all phases
- Ganhui: for drug regulators might be more amenable to AI in clinical trials; AI may be used differently by clinicians
- nonprofit in Philadelphia using AI to repurpose drugs (this site has posted on this and article will be included here)
- Ganhui: top challenge of AI in Pharma; rapid evolution of AI and have to have core understanding of your needs and dependencies; realistic view of what can be done; AI has to have iterative learning; also huge vertical challenge meaning how can we allign the use of AI through the healthcare vertical layer chain like clinicians, payers, etc.
- Ganhui sees a challenge for health companies to understand how to use AI in business to technology; AI in AI companies is different need than AI in healthcare companies
- 95% of AI projects not successful because most projects are very discrete use
2:00-2:20
Building Precision Oncology Infrastructure in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
- globally 60 precision initiatives but there really are because many in small countries
- three out of five individuals in India die of cancer
- precision medicine is a must and a hub and spoke model is needed in these places; Italy does this hub and spoke; spokes you enable the small places and bring them into the network so they know how and have access to precision medicine
- in low income countries the challenge starts with biopsy: then diagnosis and biomarker is issue; then treatment decision a problem as they may not have access to molecular tumor boards
- prevention is always a difficult task in LMICs (low income)
- you have ten times more patients in India than in US (triage can be insurmountable)
- ICGA Foundation: Indian Cancer Genome Atlas
- in India mutational frequencies vary with geographical borders like EGFR mutations or KRAS mutations
- genomic landscape of ovarian cancer in India totally different than in TCGA data
- even different pathways are altered in ovarian cancer seen in North America than in India
- MAY mean that biomarker panels need to be adjusted based on countries used in
- the molecular data has to be curated for the India cases to be submitted to a tumor board
- twenty diagnostic tests in market like TruCheck for Indian market; uses liquid biopsy
- they are also tailoring diagnostic and treatment for India getting FDA fast track approvals
2:20-2:40
Co-targeting KIT/PDGRFA and Genomic Integrity in Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors
Lori Rink, PhD, Associate Professor, Fox Chase Cancer Center
- GIST are most common nesychymal tumor in GI tract
- used to be misdiagnosed; was considered a leimyosarcoma
- very asymptomatic tumors and not good prognosis
- very refractory to genotoxic therapies
- RTK KIT/PDGFRA gain of function mutations
- Gleevec imatinib for unresectable GIST however vast majority of even responders become resistant to therapy and cancer returns
- there is a mutation map for hotspot mutations and sensitivity for gleevec
- however resistance emerged to ripretinib; in ATP binding pocket
- over treatment get a polyclonal resistance
- performed a kinome analysis; Wee1 looked like a potential target
- mouse studies (80 day) showed good efficacy
- avapiritinib ahs some neurotox and used in PDGFRA mut GIST model which is resistant to imitinib
- but if use Wee1 inhibitor with TKI can lower dose of avapiritinib
- cotargeting KIT/PDGFRA and WEE1 increases replicative stress
- they are using PDX models to test these combinations
- combination creates genomic instability





