Speaker Details

Biography

Heba Kassem is Professor of Medical Genetics and Director of Clinical Genomics Center at Alexandria Faculty of Medicine. She has obtained her Ph.D. in Cancer Genetics from Manchester University in 2002 and is a certified trainer in research ethics from Maryland University in 2005. She is involved in medical genetics education, research/publication ethics for medical and graduate students. Her research interest is primarily related to molecular genomics from a diagnostic prognostic and therapeutic perspective with several publications in this field, she also has some publications related to research ethics (please refer to Researchgate and Scopus for details on publications). She has recently participated in a project of construction of curriculum for training on publication ethics co-funded by the National US Academy of Science and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (2017). She is a peer reviewer for several international and national scientific journals in the field of genomics and translational molecular medicine. She acted as a principal investigator and coinvestigator on several research projects, the latest is the BA HCM national project which is a national/international collaborative research studying the genetics of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy among Egyptians (Sep2006-Dec2017) under the leadership of Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub . She is also involved in Clinical Genetics practice and runs together with her team a weekly genetics clinic at Alexandria University Hospital. She is a winner of several scientific and academic awards .

Abstract

Precision Medicine in Hearing Loss

Hearing Loss is a relatively common disorder which is more prevalent than diabetes mellitus. It represents a challangeing health problem as it is likely to affect the person health and social aspect of life. Most types of hearing loss are currently correctable particularly with early intervention hence role of neonatal screening is paramount. Management of hearing loss is multidisciplinary. Recently role of clinical and molecular geneticists role could not be undermined, since, most of types of HL have a genetic background in etiology. In 2014 the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics has published guidelines on causes, presentations and clinical evaluation of hearing loss aiming at etiologic diagnosis. Mittal et al, 2017 has reviewed the updates on use of high technology genetically based approaches in targeted therapy of hearing loss. Currently, management of hearing loss amongst other diseases brings us close to applications of translational medicine and implementation of technology transfer from lab bench to bed side. The future holds big promise to implementation of genomics and metagenomics in clinical practice with an anticipated better patient and family outcome. Mittal et al, Advances in regeneration of auditory hair cells and hearing restoration. Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience, 2017, 10: 236