Café Scientifique, Up Next: Is the Genome Useful in Medicine?
Stephen Quake, PhD, Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at Stanford University, will be speaking at our Café Scientifique series on Thursday, March 28 at 7 p.m.
Topic of Discussion
We are living in the genome age, where the productivity of DNA sequencers is advancing faster than Moore’s Law. Dr. Quake will describe one contribution of biophysics to this field – the development of the first single molecule DNA sequencer. He will then go on to discuss several applications of high throughput DNA sequencing in medicine, ranging from non-invasive diagnostics to the first clinically annotated human genome.
About Dr. Quake
Stephen (Steve) Quake, PhD, is Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at Stanford University. He pioneered the development of Microfluidic Large Scale Integration (LSI), demonstrating the first integrated microfluidic devices with thousands of mechanical valves. This technology is helping to pave the way for automation of biology at the nanoliter scale, and in recent years Quake and his collaborators have used it for applications as diverse as discovering a new drug for hepatitis C, mapping the genomes of environmental microbes, and measuring gene expression in individual cancer stem cells. Commercial versions of microfluidic LSI are now used in hundreds of laboratories around the world for diverse purposes.
Quake demonstrated the first successful single molecule DNA sequencing technology, which has been commercially developed and is a leading candidate to deliver the first $1,000 genome. In 2009 he and two coworkers sequenced his genome using the commercial version of the single molecule sequencing technology that he developed, an event that was widely reported in the popular press. He has received numerous awards from the NIH, MIT, Forbes, and Popular Science among others. He is a founder and scientific advisory board chair of Fluidigm, Inc. and Helicos Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: HLCS).
He is the holder of more than 80 patents, has founded at least four companies based on his conceptions, and has invented technologies that have transformed science and medicine in fields ranging from genomic sequencing and microfluidics to infectious disease and medical diagnostics.
Please take a moment to read this article, written about Dr. Quake after receiving a $500,000 research prize.
Click here to visit the Quake Lab Website.