N-of-1 and Aggregated N-of-1 Trials: Motivation, Applications and Future Directions

This seminar of the Center for Quantitative Methods and Data Science (QM&DS), in partnership with the Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Research Design (BERD) Center at Tufts CTSI and the Data-Intensive Studies Center (DISC) at Tufts University, is Wednesday, March 2, 11:00AM-noon via Zoom. The topic is N-of-1 and Aggregated N-of-1 Trials: Motivation, Applications and Future Directions, presented by Nicholas Schork, PhD.

There is tremendous interest in advancing ‘personalized’ or ‘precision’ medicine — the idea that one can tailor more effective health interventions to an individual’s unique genetic, physiological, behavioral and exposure profile. Although there have been major success stories in personalized medicine, particularly in cancer treatment settings, testing personalized interventions requires non-traditional study designs such as N-of-1 (single subject) and aggregated N-of-1 studies. Dr. Schork describes the principals behind N-of-1 trials as well as strategies for pursuing them in comprehensive and efficient ways. In particular, he describes study designs that consider the effect of individual components making up a multiple component intervention, the sequential analysis of aggregated N-of-1 trials, ’systems physiology’ studies of intervention effects in individuals, and the broad use of guided smart phone apps to optimize mental health interventions for individuals.

Faculty

Nicholas Schork, PhD is a Deputy Director and Distinguished Professor of Quantitative Medicine at The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of the City of Hope (COH) National Medical Center, and an Adjunct Professor of Medicine and Population Science at COH. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Biostatistics at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) as well as Adjunct Professor of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology at Scripps Research.

Prior to joining TGen, Dr. Schork held faculty positions at Scripps Research, the J. Craig Venter Institute, UCSD and Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Schork’s interests and expertise are in the quantitative aspects of human biology research, genetics, and integrated approaches to complex biological and medical problems. These interests include analyzing large biomedical data sets, developing systems-level approaches to the analysis of biomedical data, and the design of personalized clinical trials.

Dr. Schork has published more than 550 scientific articles and book chapters. He has mentored over 75 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, has 12 patents, and has been involved in establishing over 10 different companies in the biomedical space. A member of several scientific journal editorial boards, Dr. Schork is a frequent participant in NIH-related steering committees and review boards. He is currently scientific director and a principal investigator for the NIA-sponsored Longevity Consortium and the Integrated Longevity OMICS initiative, two multi-million-dollar initiatives to identify and characterize genetically-mediated factors contributing to human longevity and healthspan. He is also a former member of the National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) Food and Nutrition Board and current member of the NASEM special emphasis panel on diet and disease relationships. Dr. Schork received a BA, MA, MS and PhD all from the University of Michigan.

Details

Wednesday, March 2, 2022, 11:00AM-noon, via Zoom

Registration

To attend, please register here via Tufts CTSI I LEARN.