Newswise — DANVILLE, Pa. – John M. Inadomi, M.D., the Cyrus E. Rubin Professor of Medicine, and Division Chief, Gastroenterology, at the University of Washington, and Robert F. Murphy, Ph.D., Ray and Stephanie Lane Professor of Computational Biology and Director of the Ray and Stephanie Lane Center for Computational Biology in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, will serve as scientific advisors to Cernostics.
They will assist Cernostics, a life science firm that develops and commercializes advanced cancer diagnostic tests, to oversee efforts to develop a test that predicts the risk of esophageal cancer in patients with severe gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD) and Barrett’s Esophagus.
“We are pleased that Drs. Inadomi and Murphy have agreed to lend their expertise to the work we are doing at Cernostics,” said Mike Hoerres, chief executive officer, Cernostics. “Their skills, particularly in health economic modeling in Barrett’s Esophagus and machine learning approaches in high content image analysis, will be invaluable as we move forward with our efforts to develop a test to accurately predict the risk of esophageal cancer.”
Patients with chronic GERD, commonly known as “heartburn,” are at risk for developing changes in their esophagus known as Barrett’s Esophagus, a precancerous condition affecting 6 million people worldwide. Determining which patients with Barrett’s Esophagus will progress to esophageal cancer, which has a five-year survival rate of less than 15 percent, would reduce unnecessary procedures and allow for earlier application of effective, preventive and potentially life-saving treatments.
Dr. Inadomi earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., and his medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco, Calif., where he went on to complete a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in gastroenterology. Dr. Inadomi’s clinical research interests include the evaluation of new techniques to decrease mortality from esophageal adenocarcinoma, as well as the health economic modeling of screening for Barrett’s esophagus.
Dr. Murphy earned his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Columbia College, Columbia Mo., and went on to earn his doctorate degree in biochemistry from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. Dr. Murphy’s career has focused on combining fluorescence-based cell measurement methods with quantitative and computational methods, and his group pioneered the application of machine learning methods to high-resolution fluorescence microscope images depicting subcellular location patterns.
About Cernostics Inc.Cernostics is a molecular diagnostics company developing new molecular diagnostic tests for the fight against cancer. Most current diagnostic approaches offer a limited view of cancer because they fail to evaluate the tumor as a system composed of multiple cell types, not merely tumor cells. Cernostics’ patented technology is based on a systems approach to evaluating tissues via anatomic pathology, and simultaneously evaluates immune, stromal, stem cell and tumor biomarkers on a single slide while also preserving tissue structure, leading to more predictive and personalized diagnostic testing. For more information, visit www.Cernostics.com.
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