with USC Dean Emeritus Hal Slavkin & Pablo
Bringas
Beginning Wednesday January 4, 12:00 – 1:30pm
As we peek into the future, personalized
health care is on the horizon and is being called “precision healthcare” by
some. Hal Slavkin, Professor and Dean
Emeritus from USC returns to Crowell Library, offering a class about the recent
advances in health care based new understanding of the human genome. In six sessions, participants will explore
evolution, healthcare and biotechnology, with a focus on the new personalized healthcare
options. Advances in human,
animal, plant and microbial genomics is rapidly enhancing the understanding of
genes, allowing innovations in designing new organisms for specific approaches
to diagnosis and drug treatments. The mantra “faster, cheaper and better” is rapidly
advancing genomics, especially with drug designs for specific individualized
cancers.
It was not that long ago
when physicians, dentists, pharmacists, nurses and other health care
professionals had only a few treatment options for patients with seemingly
similar diagnosis for illnesses or disorders. The result was that some patients
responded well to treatment while others did not. The different outcomes were due to the
patients’ different physiologies and immune systems, complications with other biological
and external factors and even misdiagnoses.
In
addition to lectures and discussion, this course will feature a few hands-on
experiences to demonstrate how phenotype connects with genotype; the principles
underlying the development and evolutionary process of how an organism grows,
and how novel and innovative gene editing techniques can address major human
diseases and disorders such as malaria, birth defects, and cancers. The key goal of this course is to enable the curious
non-scientist or healthcare professional to appreciate and understand
regularities and irregularities in patterns of inheritance and diseases in all
living organisms. No reservations are required for these
classes.
Professor Hal Slavkin, Dean
Emeritus, University of Southern California School of Dentistry retired in June
2014 after 46 years on the full-time faculty. During his academic career he
served as Chair of Biochemistry, Dean of the School of Dentistry, and served as
the Director for the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research at
the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. Professor Slavkin lives in
Marina Del Rey.
