Tuesday, January 30, 2018, London, UK: The Biogerontology Research Foundation is pleased to announce the participation of Managing Trustee Dmitry Kaminskiy as a judge on the 2018 PMWC Most Promising Company competition at the Precision Medicine World Conference 2018. The 13th installment of the Precision Medicine World Conference took place this year in Silicon Valley between January 22-24 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. To attendees it was an opportunity to learn first-hand about the latest advances in precision medicine: thriving initiatives and clinical case studies that enable the translation of precision medicine into direct improvements in health care.

​

But to developing and emerging startup companies in diagnostics, therapeutics, and health tech, it was a golden opportunity to increase their visibility by presenting themselves to a group of leading investors, potential clients and partners.

​

The event was co-hosted by Duke university, John Hopkins University, the University of Michigan, and the University of California. The event featured talks by many leading Longevity, AI and Precision Medicine companies, including Calico, 23andMe, Regeneron, Insilico Medicine, Atomwise, and many others.

​

Central to proceedings was the competition for the PMWC 2018 Most Promising Company Award, in which a panel of judges attempted to identify future pioneers in precision medicine from among the new companies present.

​

This year's panel was comprised of the managing director at the venture fund DigitalDx Ventures Ted Driscoll, the executive director of Breakout Labs Lindy Fishburne, Partner at Illumina Ventures Alexis Ji, the CEO of Genia Technologies Stefan Roever, and Biogerontology Research Foundation's managing trustee Dmitry Kaminskiy, also co-founder and Managing Partner of Deep Knowledge Ventures, whose inclusion on the panel reflected this year's unprecedented focus on the future role of artificial Intelligence in precision medicine.

​

After a series of presentations from companies and questions from judges and audience members, two semifinalists emerged: Abreos, a San Diego-based company developing laboratory-based and point-of-care assays for precision dose monitoring of biologic drugs and Immusoft, based in Seattle, who are currently developing of a platform for treating a variety of genetic diseases through a process called Immune System Programming (ISP™).

​

Kamiskiy, finding himself at the center of the emerging consensus, commented " It was a challenging but extremely interesting duty to serve as a judge at the companies competition alongside such progressive yet well-respected firms as Illumina Ventures and DXdigital Ventures. The two semi-finalists, Abreos and Immusoft, were in fact my two favourite contenders from the very beginning. Such a great concentration of bright minds and advanced technology at the very forefront of biomedicine! It is notable that the intersection of AI and Precision Medicine emerged as a major focus of PMWC this year, and foreshadows the future of the healthcare industry in general, which will be majorly disrupted by the convergence of AI for drug discovery and biomarker development, and the paradigm shift from treatment to prevention ushered in by emerging technologies in the expanding sphere of precision medicine, leading to an era of AI-empowered Precision Health."

​

###

​

About the Biogerontology Research Foundation:

​

The Biogerontology Research Foundation is a UK non-profit research foundation and public policy center seeking to fill a gap within the research community, whereby the current scientific understanding of the ageing process is not yet being sufficiently exploited to produce effective medical interventions. The BGRF funds and conducts research which, building on the body of knowledge about how ageing happens, aims to develop biotechnological interventions to remediate the molecular and cellular deficits which accumulate with age and which underlie the ill-health of old age. Addressing ageing damage at this most fundamental level will provide an important opportunity to produce the effective, lasting treatments for the diseases and disabilities of ageing, required to improve quality of life in the elderly. The BGRF seeks to use the entire scope of modern biotechnology to attack the changes that take place in the course of ageing, and to address not just the symptoms of age-related diseases but also the mechanisms of those diseases.

​

About the Precision Medicine World Conference:

​

The Precision Medicine World Conference (PMWC), formerly known as the Personalized Medicine World Conference, is an independent and established conference series considered to be the preeminent precision medicine conference that attracts recognized leaders, top global researchers and medical professionals, and innovators across healthcare and biotechnology sectors to showcase practical content that helps close the knowledge gap between different sectors, thereby catalyzing cross-functional fertilization and collaboration. Since 2009, recognized as a vital cornerstone for all constituents of the health care and biotechnology community, PMWC provides an exceptional forum for the exchange of information about the latest advances in technology (e.g. DNA sequencing technology), in clinical implementation (e.g. cancer and beyond), research, and in all aspects related to the regulatory and reimbursement sectors.