SLAS2025 Closing Keynote - Radical Collaboration to Accelerate Cancer Precision Functional Genomics

Jesse Boehm, PhD
Over the past decade, we have witnessed a revolution in cancer precision medicine which is now enabling the delivery of targeted, chemotherapeutic and immunotherapeutic agents to patients whose tumors harbor molecular features predicting key vulnerabilities. To ensure that each patient with a common or rare cancer stands to benefit from these advances, equally powerful functional genomics technologies deployed at scale are becoming essential to both accelerate the nomination of novel targets for therapeutic development and to validate molecular predictions encoded by the complex molecular makeup of a given patient’s tumor. Dr. Boehm will report on the state of the precision functional genomics field, including his work on the Cancer Dependency Map and the international Human Cancer Models Initiative and describe ongoing work in the lab to apply single cell genomics technologies to readout the perturbation of heterogenous human tumor tissues on clinically meaningful timeframes. To drive these and other solutions, Dr. Boehm will describe the emerging shift in our nation towards team science driven by the pillars of “radical collaboration” and provide examples of how Break Through Cancer TeamLabs are collaborating urgently to template new models and solutions to benefit patients even faster.