The molecular Personalisation of Medicine, Future Vision or immediate Necessity?



Thursday, 15. September 2011 | 11:15 Uhr

Speaker

Jonathan Knowles

Organisation

Roche Holding

Reporting

Professor Jonathan Knowles, Roche Holding, outlined that the concept of personalized medicine is nothing new. Only the technology used for it has changed. Today, there are a lot of good drugs. The challenge for the future will be to find new ways to advance medicine. As in large numbers of patients, treatments fail or have negative side effects, a more stratified medicine is needed that also works with subgroups of patients. New ways are required to generate clinical data. All relevant information of clinical data has to be registered. According to Knowles, doctors usually supply too many medications. With molecular diagnosis, it would be possible to avoid needless drugs administration.

Jonathan Knowles

Magdalen College School, Oxford
1969 1st Class Honours Degree in Molecular Genetics, University of East Anglia,
England
1973 Ph.D. in Genetics of Mitochondria with Professor G.H. Beale F.R.S., University of
Edinburgh, Scotland,
1973-74 R.C. Post Doctoral Research Fellow with Professor G.H. Beale, F.R.S., Department
of Genetics, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
1975 EMBO short term fellowship at Centre de Génétique Moléculaire, CNRS, Gif-sur-
Yvette, France
1975-77 Royal Society European Exchange Fellowship at Centre de Génétique Moléculaire,
CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette, France (with Professor P. Slonimski and Dr J. Beisson)
1977 Volkswagen fellowship at the University of Tübingen and Max-Planck Institut,
Tübingen, Germany 3 months NIH fellowship at the University of Colorado Medical
Centre, Dept. of Microbiology and Immunology, Denver
1978-80 EMBO fellowship to Department of Medical Chemistry and Department of Genetics,
University of Helsinki, Finland
1979 Visiting Assistant Professor, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NY
Appointed Docent of the University of Helsinki
1980-86 Head of the recombinant DNA group at the Biotechnical Laboratory, VTT, Helsinki,
Finland
1986-89 Research Professor and Head of Molecular Biology at the Biotechnical Laboratory,
VTT, Helsinki, Finland
1989-97 Director of the Glaxo Institute for Molecular Biology, Geneva, Switzerland
1995-97 Research Director, Glaxo Wellcome Europe. Responsible for all preclinical research
at the four European sites at Verona, Paris, Madrid and Geneva (500 people)
1997 Head of Research, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd
1998 Member of the Corporate Executive Committee of the Roche Group
1998 Member of the Board of Directors of Genentech (Roche Subsidiary)
2003 Member of the Board of Directors of Chugai Pharmaceuticals (Roche Subsidiary)
2004 Chairman of the Research Directors’ Group (RDG) of EFPIA (European Federation
of Pharmaceutical Industry Associations)

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