Chandler Scott

Dr. Chandler leads Precision Safety at Roche, which focuses on characterizing the patient-centric drivers of response to therapy in order to optimize benefit/risk balance of our medicines.  The group works across all therapeutic areas and phases of development and commercialization, through extensive interaction with internal collaborators and external partners.  By leveraging high-dimensional data (e.g., genomics, immunophenotyping), applying advanced analytics (e.g., machine learning, natural language processing), and deploying novel technologies (e.g., organoids, remote digital monitoring), the team seeks to develop innovative approaches to bringing the right medicine to the right patient at the right time, for every patient, everywhere.  Dr. Chandler attended medical and graduate school at the University of California, Irvine, where he trained in Medicine and Toxicology.  He then attended the University of California, Los Angeles, and underwent further training in General Surgery, Surgical Oncology, and Tumor Immunology.  Over the last 20 years, Dr. Chandler has held multiple roles in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry with a focus on drug safety, translational science, and precision medicine.

The prime directive of medicine is to first do no harm, yet there remains an unmet need to develop medicine and diagnostic strategies that truly optimize benefit/risk balance at the individual patient level.  By understanding the multiple patient-specific factors that influence response to medicines, the potential to develop truly personalized treatment strategies for patients around the world becomes achievable.  The session will review recent findings from exploratory analyses on the factors impacting response to cancer immunotherapy.  Highlights include impact of germline genetics such a polygenic risk for autoimmune disease and HLA variants; the role of dynamic changes in immune profiles following treatment; and how tumor biology and the presence or absence of circulating tumor DNA may are associated with different responses to treatment.  The goal of the session is to share emerging insights and a potential framework for precision oncology care that considers the patient-specific factors as well as the tumor-specific factors that could be leveraged to optimize benefit/risk balance across treatments.