Faces + Spaces @ TGen

Meet the rest of the PBC community through our monthly Faces and Spaces networking event. Each month join a small group of staff, researchers and community members from around the PBC to learn about a new area of the campus, upcoming programming and other exciting things happening right in your neighborhood. Grab a cup of coffee and collaborate! This event will introduce the Translational Genomics Research Institute, or TGen, an affiliate of the City of Hope. TGen was established in 2002 through an assembly of more than fifty leaders and visionaries in science, medicine, government and business by Dr. Jeffrey Trent. Today, it is a foundational company in the PBC and is a leader in translational research in the areas of cancer, neurological disorders, rare childhood disorders, and pathogen and microbome work.

Register here.

Featured partners

The Phoenix Bioscience Core – Situated on a 30-acre campus in downtown Phoenix, the PBC is the center of gravity for life science innovation in the region. Home to all three of the state’s public research universities conducting millions of dollars in public research and more than a dozen life science and biotech companies, the PBC is driving translational discovery in the areas of immunotherapy, cancer research, nutrition and wellness, and much more. Learn more about the PBC at phoenixbiosciencecore.com.

TGen – At TGen, we are pioneers in deciphering the story a person’s genome has to tell. For individuals faced with a serious diagnosis, our scientists and clinicians have the ability to let a patients’ genome reveal its uniqueness in ways that are both powerful and transformative, especially when it comes to treating disease in a precise and individual manner.

At TGen, we are setting a new medical standard where the future of medicine is happening now. TGen has had an important and highly positive impact in understanding the molecular drivers in cancer and other diseases and disorders, but more importantly, has been among the world’s leaders in applying this knowledge toward the treatment of patients.

Early adopters in the medical community believe that precision medicine and the power of translational research fuels the next wave of critical diagnosis and treatment. By strategically aligning ourselves with first-in-class medical providers, TGen provides direct benefit to those patients faced with limited options.

A hallmark of TGen is our belief that by utilizing the latest technologies and collaborating with the strongest of partners, we can develop better tools to increase our understanding of complex diseases and to better predict which treatments might be most effective, i.e., one-of-a-kind clinical trials (the right drug, at the right dose, at the right time). Learn more at tgen.org.

Featured Speakers from TGen

Sampath Rangasamy, Ph.D. | Research Associate Professor, Neurogenomics Division

Dr. Rangasamy received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Madras, India, and subsequent post-doctoral training at the University of New Mexico and Barrow Neurological Institute (BNI) before moving to TGen as a Research Assistant professor in Neurogenomics Division.The primary focus of his research is to investigate the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying neurogenetics disorders. The use of next generation sequencing technology (NGS) in the clinical setting has resulted in advancing the genetic diagnosis of numerous neurodevelopmental disorders. As a result, neurogenetics has moved from being a discipline of clinical description and classification to a molecular science discipline-based on neurobiology. Once the gene is identified, scientists can ask comprehensive questions about the molecular alterations in affected person to understand the disease pathogenesis. Dr. Rangasamy utilizes the mouse, zebrafish, and human iPSC-derived neuronal models to understand the molecular and cellular basis of neurogenetic diseases. His research is also focused on identifying disease-specific cellular phenotype for the development of high-throughput (HTS) screening assay to develop novel therapies.

Amanda Lim | Specialist, Educational Outreach

Amanda Lim was a bench researcher at TGen for around 10 years and now serves as TGen’s Specialist for Education and Outreach.She is responsible for working both onsite and offsite to support TGen’s incentive of increasing the community’s working knowledge of genomics and educate, train and inspire the next generation of researchers and physicians.She works with students from middle school through college, teaching them about the groundbreaking work being done at TGen. She does this through discussions and activities in the classroom, hosting tables at local university events, and providing tours to students visiting TGen to see the work taking place first-hand. As well as runs the institute’s flagship internship program, Helios Scholars at TGen, during the summer months. For this program, 45 interns work on their own project with a mentor at TGen, while developing the professional skills they need for their future career in science and medicine.Amanda has a true passion for the work happening at TGen and enjoyed utilizing her knowledge of the institute in her current role to help spark that passion in others.