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SELECTBIO Conferences Circulating DNA, Circulating RNA, Circulating Tumor Cells, Circulating Proteins

Johan Skog's Biography



Johan Skog, Chief Scientific Officer, Exosome Diagnostics Inc

Dr. Skog currently serves as chief scientific officer of Exosome Diagnostics where he is leading the research and development efforts for biofluid diagnostics using exosomes in diseases such as cancer, metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases. He is the primary inventor of Exosome Diagnostics' core technology and, in particular, blood-based genetic diagnostics of cancer. Dr. Skog made the discovery that tumor-shed exosomes (microvesicles) contain genetic information of the tumor. He showed that these microvesicles serve to deliver messages to other cells inducing changes favorable to the proliferation of cancer cells. He demonstrated that these tumor exosomes are released into the bloodstream and that they can be isolated and studied for genetic mutations (Skog et al. Nature Cell Biology 2008; 10: 1470-1476). Prior to the start of the company Exosome Diagnostics, Dr. Skog was working at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School where he was studying the role of tumor stem cells in gliomas and later tumor derived exosomes, including their content of RNA biomarkers and transposable elements such as endogenous retroviruses. He also showed that gene therapy vectors can be incorporated into microvesicles and be used as a “stealth” vector with changed tropisms (Maguire et al. Molecular Therapy 2012 Feb 7). Dr. Skog received his PhD at the Department of Virology, Umea University, Sweden, working on novel gene therapy vectors for treatment of gliomas.

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Liquid Biopsy Using Exosome RNA and ctDNA, Realizing the “Holy Grail” of Personalized Medicine

Monday, 21 March 2016 at 16:30

Add to Calendar ▼2016-03-21 16:30:002016-03-21 17:30:00Europe/LondonLiquid Biopsy Using Exosome RNA and ctDNA, Realizing the “Holy Grail” of Personalized MedicineSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com

The field of liquid biopsy has gained an enormous interest the last couple of years. Being able to detect tumor derived genetic profiles and track the evolution of tumor mutations over time has been a long sought after goal of personalized medicine. Utilizing cell free tumor DNA (ctDNA) for detection of mutations in plasma has shown great promise in clinical studies and has even been included in the label as a companion diagnostic for Iressa in Europe when no tissue is available. However, ctDNA analysis suffer from several shortcomings. The copy numbers of ctDNA carrying the mutations are often very low in plasma, limiting the sensitivity of the assay and can also not be used to monitor splice variants and other RNA specific aberrations that are clinically important. Our exosome platform addresses both of these issues. Mutations are abundantly detected on exosome RNA from plasma, and can also be efficiently used to profile splice variants and fusions.


Add to Calendar ▼2016-03-21 00:00:002016-03-22 00:00:00Europe/LondonCirculating DNA, Circulating RNA, Circulating Tumor Cells, Circulating ProteinsSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com