Webinar Description:

The microbiome offers a vast and mostly untapped diversity of chemical signals influencing normal development, disease, and even the response to therapeutics. As a result, the microbiome is attracting ever-greater attention from scientists in areas as diverse as nutrition, immunology, oncology, reproductive medicine, skin care, animal health and more. In fact, the rate of investment in microbiome-related research has been growing at a rapid pace, with future growth projections as high as 22% in the next 5 years. Despite significant investment in large-scale metagenomic sequencing conducted over the last several years, most researchers are still no closer to understanding underlying microbiome functional state and how it impacts health, wellness and disease. Join us to learn how leading life science researchers and drug developers have used the functional insights from untargeted metabolomics to decipher the complexity of the microbiome – unraveling “how” the organisms of the microbiome exert their influence on health.

Learning Objectives

Attendees will gain an understanding of how untargeted metabolomics can answer pressing questions in microbiome research.
Specific topics will include:

• The foundational value of metabolomics for studying the microbiome
• Essential components of Gold Standard metabolomics
• Key strategies for achieving actionable findings
• Researcher spotlight: Successful applications of metabolomics in microbiome research

Speakers:

Nikole E. Kimes, Ph.D.
President, CSO & Co-founder
Siolta Therapeutics

Dr. Nikole E. Kimes, Ph.D. is Founder, President & CSO of Siolta Therapeutics, a biotech company developing live biotherapeutic products (LBP) for the prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases, starting with asthma. As the lead executive driving Siolta's early-stage development, Dr. Kimes is heading a talented team of scientists, blending microbiology, immunology, and bioinformatics expertise to leverage microbiome data for the improvement of patient stratification and development of precision microbial therapeutics. An inventor of Siolta's technology, her research in cofounder Dr. Susan Lynch's lab at UCSF provided the foundation from which the translational research program at Siolta Therapeutics has developed. Prior to Siolta, Dr. Kimes was an academic scientist with over a decade of research experience in microbial ecology and host/microbe interactions supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Fellowship, a European Commission FP7 cooperative project (MaCuMBA), and a postdoctoral scholar position at UCSF.

Eran Segal, Ph.D.
Professor
Weizmann Institute of Science

Eran Segal is a Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, heading a lab with a multi-disciplinary team of computational biologists and experimental scientists in the area of Computational and Systems biology. His group has extensive experience in machine learning, computational biology, probabilistic models, and analysis of heterogeneous high-throughput genomic data. His research focuses on Microbiome, Nutrition, Genetics, and their effect on health and disease. His aim is to develop personalized nutrition and personalized medicine.

Prof. Segal published over 140 publications, and received several awards and honors for his work, including the Overton prize, awarded annually by the International Society for Bioinformatics (ICSB) to one scientist for outstanding accomplishments in computational biology, and the Michael Bruno award. He was recently elected as an EMBO member and as a member of the young Israeli academy of science.

Before joining the Weizmann Institute, Prof. Segal held an independent research position at Rockefeller University, New York.

Education: Prof. Segal was awarded a B.Sc. in Computer Science summa cum laude in 1998, from Tel-Aviv University, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Genetics in 2004, from Stanford University.
Lab website: http://genie.weizmann.ac.il

Gregory Michelotti Ph.D.
Scientific Director
Metabolon, Inc.

Dr. Michelotti is a biochemist with special expertise in the analysis of large metabolomics and gene expression datasets. As principle investigator of a translational research laboratory at Duke University for 15 years, Dr. Michelotti successfully attracted both federal and pharmaceutical grants. His laboratory contributed to the identification of novel G protein coupled receptor-mediated stress-response cascades that contribute to de-regulated epithelial growth responses. Collectively, this work resulted in the publication of over 70 peer reviewed publications, resulting in an h-index of 31. Dr. Michelotti joined Metabolon in 2015 to apply his expertise in signal transduction, cancer biology, and metabolism to assist investigators in the successful design and execution, and analysis of large metabolomic data sets to provide biological insight into complex human pathologies.

Cost: No Cost!