Questions:

Kristine R. Crews: I’ve been a member since PGRN III was established in 2010 and I came up through the Pharmacogenomics of Anticancer Agents Research in Children (PAAR4Kids) group. The first PGRN meeting I attended was in Nashville that year, where our team presented our first efforts in creating clinical decision support for pharmacogenomics in the electronic health record. The PGRN scientific meetings are unparalleled for hearing of cutting-edge translational research and for networking with pharmacogenomics researchers and implementers.

2.       What is your current position/role, and what do you enjoy most about it?

Kristine R. Crews: I am Director of Research Operations in the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. At St. Jude, our clinicians are researchers and our researchers are clinically-minded. As a translational pharmacogenomics researcher, I bridge the bench to the bedside. I work within our Clinical Pharmacogenomics Program that focuses on providing tailored personalized dosing to pediatric patients. A large part of our team’s emphasis is on training the next generation of pharmacogenomics experts, as well as providing pharmacogenomic education to patients, families and other healthcare professionals.

Yingbo Huang: Currently, I am a postdoctoral research fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. I am also affiliated with the Broad Institute as a postdoctoral scholar in the Medical and Population Genetics Program. I greatly enjoy studying cancer and anti-cancer drug responses. During my PhD training in Stephanie Huang’s group, I gained experience in analyzing large-scale multi-omic data from cancer patients and derived biologically relevant hypotheses from these analyses. Often, I observed interesting associations between genetic bases and phenotypic variations, such as disease prognosis and drug response. I always wanted to experimentally investigate my observations in a clinically relevant model. This led me to extend my research training to genetic editing in cancer research. Currently, I am studying the genetic and non-genetic mechanisms of drug resistance in colorectal cancers.

3.       How has PGRN helped your career in pharmacogenomics?

Kristine R. Crews: I consider PGRN a central community for clinical and translational researchers in pharmacogenomics. No other society has the focus that spans discovery research to implementation of pharmacogenomics in clinical practice. The RIPS topics and in-person scientific meetings and poster sessions are always of interest, always novel, and help us to collaborate to push boundaries in pharmacogenomics discovery and implementation. The global focus of the PGRN has made the world smaller for us all and will increase equity in pharmacogenomics research.

Yingbo Huang:One aspect I love about PGRN is that I have met many brilliant researchers in the fields of human genetics and statistical genetics. During my early PhD training, I was fortunate to consult with these experts on questions I encountered, such as running GWAS. In the field of PGx, great resources and tools, such as PharmGKB, have tremendously benefited my research. One of my manuscripts sourced many annotations from PharmGKB.

4.       What do you see as the most exciting advances in pharmacogenomics over the next 2-5 years?

Kristine R. Crews: We’ve come so far with implementing precision medicine for patients, and the field is poised for rapid advancement in the next five years. In oncology, we anticipate advances in developing comprehensive genomic profiles that partner with functional precision medicine techniques to predict drug response and enable more precise treatment selection. Additionally, real-world data integration will refine pharmacogenomic models. These advancements will ultimately improve patient outcomes and drive precision medicine forward.

I’m excited about the growing dedicated effort and rigorous use of improvement and implementation science methods for adoption in practice. By collaborating with researchers who have expertise in implementation science, pharmacogenomics can really become the model for how to rapidly move discoveries into practice.

Yingbo Huang: As a scientist, I hope that more associations identified in PGx work will be verified as causal, and the underlying mechanisms will be elucidated.

Personal questions

5.       If there are no restrictions to travel, where would you like to go in the next 3-6 months?

Kristine R. Crews: There are so many gorgeous parts of North America to see. I’d love to spend time anywhere where there are hiking trails and beautiful vistas during the day and dark skies for stargazing at night.

Yingbo Huang: I would like to go back home to see my family.

6.       When you’re not working, how do you enjoy spending your time?

Kristine R. Crews: You’ll find me on the road cheering on my kids’ lacrosse and soccer teams nearly every weekend. Soccer is always on a TV in our house, especially the beloved US Women’s National Soccer Team.

Yingbo Huang: Although transitioning from bioinformatics work to experimental work does not leave me much spare time, I enjoy watching shows and movies to relax.

View Previous Member Spotlights