Edith Heard

Collège de France

Epigénétique et mémoire cellulaire

Année 2024-2025

Conférence - Stephen Quake : Medical Innovations from the Genome Revolution: Liquid Biopsies

Stephen Quake

Head of Science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Lee Otterson Professor at Stanford University

Stephen Quake est invité par l'assemblée du Collège de France sur proposition de la Pr Edith Heard.

Résumé

One of the most important medical innovations to arise from the genome revolution is the development of liquid biopsies: simple blood tests which replace the need for invasive sampling in fields as diverse as pregnancy, transplant medicine, infectious disease, and cancer. Virtually all of these liquid biopsies are based on a physiological phenomenon discovered in Strasbourg in 1948: circulating cell free nucleic acids. Despite more than a half century of research, this phenomenon did not have a clinical use until it was paired with high throughput sequencing and knowledge of the human genome sequence. I will describe how our lab developed a variety of diagnostic tests which have replaced invasive biopsies and are now used by millions of patients each year.

Stephen Quake

Stephen Quake is Head of Science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, where he oversees CZI's science grant programs, technology development, and the CZ Biohub Network. He has received numerous awards for his contributions to science and is one of only two dozen scientists elected to all three National Academies. Steve also holds a faculty position at Stanford University, where he is the Lee Otterson Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics. Previously he was the founding co-president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub (2016-2022), investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (2006-2016), and professor at the California Institute of Technology (1996-2005).