Jonathan Knowles has been very active in promoting Personalised Medicine in both academia and the pharmaceutical industry for several decades. He was Head of Group Research and Member of the Executive Committee at Roche up to the end of 2009. He was a member of the Genentech Board for 12 years and a member of the Chugai Board for 7 years. Under his leadership, the Roche group developed and implemented a strategy of highly effective therapies based on personalized healthcare. He was for 5 years the Chairman of the Hever Group and the Research Directors’ Group of EFPIA and was the founding chairman of the Board of the Innovative Medicines Initiative, a unique public private partnership with a budget of over 5 Billion Euros. Jonathan Knowles held a Distinguished Professorship in Personalised medicine at FIMM (Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland) at the University of Helsinki 2010-201. He was appointed as Executive chairman of Immunocore Ltd. and Adaptimmune Ltd, two leading UK Cancer Immunotherapy Companies since 2013 and serves on the boards of a number of Biotech companies.

Mike Standing is Life Sciences and Health Care industry leader for the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region. He has consulted to the life sciences and health care industries for over 20 years, working with pharmaceutical companies, medical device firms, hospitals, research institutions/foundations, and health insurers and government on corporate strategy, commercial transformation, operations, medical innovation, and organizational issues.

Sally John, Ph.D. is the VP of Genomics and Computational Biology at Biogen Idec, her group focuses on applying human genetics, genomics and analytical methods to support drug discovery and development, from identification of new targets through to understanding genetic variability in drug response and patient stratification. She is a passionate advocate of the value of human genetics to support early drug discovery and has founded a number of groups within industry to strengthen the application of genetics, including a human genetics group at Pfizer and the Statistical Genetics group at AstraZeneca. Her most recent position prior to Biogen Idec was Head of Clinical Genetics and Bioinformatics at Pfizer. She gained a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Manchester, UK and held academic positions including Senior Lecturer in Genetic Epidemiology at the University of Manchester. Her academic focus of research has been in the area of inflammatory genetics, including rheumatoid arthritis, asthma and pain, and genetic epidemiology methods as applied to the analysis of complex traits. She is active in the external and pre-competitive community and has acted as the Co-Chair of the International Serious Adverse Events Consortium, an industry lead pre-competitive consortium focussing on the genetic basis of drug induced serious adverse events.

Sir John is a Cambridge graduate who started work in the automobile industry. His career took flight when he founded CAP Scientific Ltd, which grew rapidly to become a core part of the CAP Group plc and subsequently the Sema Group plc of which he was UK Managing Director. He was then asked by the government to take on the transformation of its defence research laboratories into a commercial organisation. In due course these became an internationally successful technology services company and were floated on the LSE as QinetiQ Group plc of which Sir John became Chairman in 2006.At the same time he was asked to take the Chair of the Medical Research Council and in 2009 he also took the Chair of Nesta. Sir John retired from QinetiQ in February 2010. Sir John is a past president of the IET and holds a number of honorary Doctorates and Fellowships, including the Royal Academy of Engineering. He was knighted in 1999.

Professor Sir John Bell FRS is Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, and Chairman of the Office for the Strategic Coordination of Health Research. As a Rhodes Scholar (1975-78), Sir John undertook his medical training in the UK and then went on to Stanford University, returning to the UK in 1987. His research interests are in the area of autoimmune disease and immunology where he has contributed to the understanding of immune activation in a range of autoimmune diseases. In 1993, he founded the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, one of the world’s leading centres for complex trait common disease genetics. Sir John was responsible for the working party that produced the highly influential Academy of Medical Sciences “Strengthening Clinical Research” report that highlighted the need for the UK to focus some of its attention on developing expertise in translational research. In December 2011, Sir John was appointed one of two UK Life Sciences Champions by the Prime Minister.

Gary Middleton is Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Birmingham who specialises in lung cancer and colorectal cancer. Appointed to a chair of Medical Oncology at Birmingham in 2013, he is building up a strong clinical research programme in lung and colorectal cancer. Gary has a strong presence in UK stratified medicine clinical trials and is overall Chief Investigator for Matrix, a multi-centre, multi-arm, molecularly stratified clinical trial programme for UK patients with lung cancer. Gary is also a member of the trials management group and Chief Investigator for the BRAF arm of FOCUS4, a molecularly stratified multi-site, multi-arm, multi-stage randomised trials programme for UK patients with colorectal cancer. He was recently awarded MRC Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation funding to investigate the impact of the addition of Ruxolitinib, a STAT3 inhibitor, in mesothelioma. He is also co-lead for the immunobiology arm of TRACERx (Tracking Cancer Evolution through Therapy), a £14 million CRUK-funded study aiming to define how lung cancer develops spatially and temporally. In addition to leading his own clinical research group, Gary is a member of the NCRI Lung Cancer Clinical Studies Group, the advanced lung cancer sub-group, the advanced colorectal sub-group and the pancreatic sub-group. He is a member of the Cancer Research UK Clinical Trials Awards and Advisory Committee (CTAAC). He also holds advisory board membership for a number of drug companies, and is a member of the Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Centre’s advisory board.

Talk recorded at PMWC UK 2015, Oxford. Kim Popovits has served as president and CEO of Genomic Health since 2009 and as president and chief operating officer since 2002. Prior to joining Genomic Health, Popovits served in various roles, most recently as senior vice president of marketing and sales, at Genentech, Inc. During her 15 years at Genentech, she led the successful commercialization of 14 new therapies, including Herceptin. Before joining Genentech, Popovits served as division manager for American Critical Care. In 2008, Popovits was named Woman of the Year by the Women Health Care Executives, and she has been named one of the Most Influential Women in the Bay Area by The San Francisco Business Times from 2006 to 2011. She holds a bachelor of arts in business from Michigan State University.

Professor Munir Pirmohamed is currently David Weatherall Chair in Medicine at the University of Liverpool, and a Consultant Physician at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital. He is also the Associate Executive Pro Vice Chancellor for Clinical Research and Head of Department of Molecular and Clinical Pharmacology. He also holds the only NHS Chair of Pharmacogenetics in the UK, and is Director of the M.R.C. Centre for Drug Safety Sciences, and Director of the Wolfson Centre for Personalised Medicine. He is also an inaugural NIHR Senior Investigator, and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in the UK. He has authored over 370 peer-reviewed publications. Professor Pirmohamed’s research focuses on individual variability in drug response (including anti-cancer drugs), both safety and efficacy, with a view to evaluating the mechanisms, and identifying strategies to personalise healthcare in order to optimise drug efficacy and minimise toxicity. The work spans the whole spectrum from discovery to implementation with laboratory based studies being linked translationally to patient studies, with the aim being to develop the evidence base that can move discoveries from the lab to the clinic, and from clinic to application. Professor Pirmohamed has received a number of honours including most recently, the William Withering Medal from the Royal College of Physicians.

Peter Paul Yu, MD, FACP, FASCO, is a medical oncologist and haematologist and Director of Cancer Research at Palo Alto Medical Foundation, where he worked since 1989. In addition to his role as the 2014-2015 President of ASCO, Dr. Yu also serves on the Scientific Program, Nominating, Government Relations, and Special Awards Selection Committees. Since joining ASCO in 1986, Dr. Yu has served on the Quality of Care Committee, Strategic Planning Committee, Integrated Media and Technology Committee, Board of Directors, and Cancer Research Committee, among others. He has served as Chair of the Health Information Technology Workgroup, Clinical Practice Committee, and Best of ASCO Planning Committee, and as President of the Association of Northern California Oncologists (ANCO; an ASCO State/Regional Affiliate society). He was Co-Chair of the ASCO-NCI Clinical Oncology Requirements for the EHR Committee (2008). He is currently a columnist on ASCOconnection.org. In addition to his ASCO involvement, Dr. Yu is a member of the Cancer and Leukemia Group B as well as the Gynecologic Oncology Group. He is a Co-Chair of the Commission for the Certification of Health Information Technology Workgroups on Research and Oncology. Dr. Yu received his medical degree from Brown University, and performed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital and a fellowship in neoplastic diseases at Mount Sinai Hospital. He was a Research Fellow and Associate at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Nazneen Rahman is Professor of Human Genetics and Head of Division of Genetics & Epidemiology at The Institute of Cancer Research. She is also a genetics physician and Head of Cancer Genetics at The Royal Marsden. Her research work is directed towards identification and clinical characterisation of human disease genes, with her primary areas of research being breast, ovarian & childhood cancer susceptibility. She is currently leading a translational research programme which aims to implement testing for cancer predisposition genes into mainstream oncology services.