CHICAGO, May 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Dr. Andrea Califano, a pioneer in cancer systems biology and a renowned researcher at Columbia University, has joined the Tempus Scientific Advisory Board. In this role, he will serve as an advisor to the company and will bring his decades of experience researching the clinical implications of how DNA mutations and RNA expression levels interact at the proteomic level.
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“I have spent my career working to determine the genetic drivers of cancer and believe that with the intersection of science and technology, we are on the verge of transforming the way cancer care is delivered,” said Dr. Andrea Califano. “I am excited to join the Scientific Board at Tempus and to help them accelerate the broad application of data in both the research and clinical environment.”
Dr. Califano is the Clyde and Helen Wu Professor of Chemical Systems Biology at Columbia University Medical Center. He is the Founding Chair of the Department of Systems Biology, Director of the JP Sulzberger Columbia Genome Center, and Associate Director for Bioinformatics of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, and also holds appointments in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics and Department of Biomedical Informatics. He joins the board along with Dr. Arul M. Chinnaiyan and Dr. David Agus.
Meanwhile, DarwinHealth, a precision focused cancer medicine company, co-founded by Dr. Califano, that uses RNA analysis in an effort to match patients with treatments has partnered with Tempus on a personalized medicine research initiative aimed at improving outcomes for patients diagnosed with cancer. As part of the collaboration, Tempus will use information obtained from DarwinHealth reports in conjunction with approximately 2,000 de-identified patients for whom Tempus has done genetic sequencing of normal, tumor DNA and RNA in an effort to further explore protein interactions and tumor growth.
The collaboration with DarwinHealth, using a systems biology approach to cancer care, will leverage the deep molecular and clinical data that Tempus collects daily, and the algorithms that Andrea has developed over the last decade, to help determine the driving force behind various cancers.
“At Tempus, we are on a mission to recruit the best and brightest minds in cancer to help shape and guide the future of cancer treatment,” said Eric Lefkofsky, Co-founder and CEO at Tempus. “This partnership is consistent with that commitment as both Andrea and DarwinHealth are pioneering new ways to explore protein interactions that might open the door to an entirely new class of therapeutics.”
Tempus provides molecular sequencing and clinical analytic solutions to top academic centers, hospital systems, associations, and healthcare providers.
About Tempus:
Tempus is a technology company that is building the world’s largest library of molecular and clinical data and an operating system to make that data accessible and useful. We enable physicians to deliver personalized cancer care for patients through our interactive analytical and machine learning platform. We provide genomic sequencing services and analyze molecular and therapeutic data to empower physicians to make real-time, data-driven decisions. Our goal is for each patient to benefit from the treatment of others who came before by providing physicians with tools that learn as we gather more data. For more information, visit tempus.com.