Jimmy Lin of Rare Genomes Institute, Kevin Lustig of Assay Depot, Atul Butte of Stanford, and Hugh Reinhoff of MyDaughtersDNA.org talk about using open science and coalition building to combat rare diseases.
Bio
Atul Butte
Atul Butte, MD, PhD is Chief of the Division of Systems Medicine and Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Medicine, and by courtesy, Computer Science, at Stanford University and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. Dr. Butte trained in Computer Science at Brown University, worked as a software engineer at Apple and Microsoft, received his MD at Brown University, trained in Pediatrics and Pediatric Endocrinology at Children's Hospital Boston, then received his PhD in Health Sciences and Technology from Harvard Medical School and MIT.
Jimmy Lin
Geneticist and founder of the Rare Genomics Institute, an organization that allows patients to crowdsource funds and genomes to accelerate research of their rare genetic diseases. Jimmy is the lead computational biologist for the ground-breaking cancer genome sequencing efforts from the Vogelstein Lab at Johns Hopkins. Their sequencing of the first 100+ cancer exomes in 5 different tissue types has helped lay the foundation for a revolution in cancer genomics. After completing his MD/PhD at Johns Hopkins, along with colleagues at Harvard and Yale, Jimmy started Rare Genomics Institute: a non-profit biotech venture that microfunds and enables genome sequencing for children with rare and orphan diseases.
Kevin Lustig
Kevin has spent most of the past 28 years either managing research groups or running his own experiments at the bench. He is co-founder and CEO of Assay Depot, which owns and operates a network of online research exchanges that have the potential to dramatically improve how research outsourcing is done. In 2001, Kevin co-founded Kalypsys, a fully integrated drug discovery company that raised over $170 million in venture funding and put five drug candidates into human clinical trials.
Prior to Kalypsys, he directed lead discovery at Tularik, a highly successful biopharmaceutical company purchased by Amgen for more than $2 billion. He carried out postdoctoral work in Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School after receiving a PhD degree from Marc Kirschner’s laboratory in the Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
Kevin has a M.S. degree in Biochemistry from the University of Missouri-Columbia and an A.B. degree, magna cum laude, in Molecular and Cell Biology from Cornell University’s College of Arts and Sciences. His research discoveries have been published in Science magazine and other leading scientific journals and he has been awarded eight technology patents.
Hugh Rienhoff
Hugh Rienhoff is an entrepreneur and Founder of MyDaughtersDNA.org, a organization dedicated to rare genetic conditions. He is also Chairman of the Board for the online medical training company, GeneEd. Dr. Rienhoff has more than 14 years experience as a venture investor and entrepreneur in the life science sector. During much of the 90's he was a partner at New Enterprise Associates, a venture investment firm based in Menlo Park, California and Baltimore, Maryland, leading their biotechnology investing. He was a founding director of such companies as Healtheon/WebMD (HLTH) and Aurora Biosciences (ABSC). In 1998, he founded DNA Sciences (originally Kiva Genetics) and served as its Chairman & CEO until late 2001. Before founding DNA Sciences, he was a Director of Abingworth Management Ltd., where he ran the U.S. operation of the London-based venture firm. Dr. Rienhoff has served on numerous boards including Microcide (MCDE), Hexagen and Vactex and currently serves as a board member for Peptimmune, Iconix Pharmaceuticals, and Hydra Biosciences. Dr. Rienhoff was recently appointed as a member of the faculty in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He trained in mathematics, medicine, and genetics at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. He received a Doctor of Medicine degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a Bachelor of Arts degree, with honors, in Biology and English Literature from Williams College.
