Caris Life Sciences Vice Chairman Dr. Jonathan Knowles to Receive Personalized Medicine World Conference UK 2015 Luminary Award

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Apr 13, 2015, 06:00 ET

IRVING, Texas, April 13, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Caris Life Sciences®, a leading biotechnology company focused on fulfilling the promise of precision medicine, recognizes Jonathan Knowles, Ph.D., Vice Chairman of its Board of Directors, for being awarded the Personalized Medicine World Conference (PMWC) United Kingdom 2015 Luminary Award for his contributions to the field of personalized medicine over the last twenty years. Knowles will be honored during the PMWC United Kingdom 2015 meeting on April 15 at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in Oxford, England.

Knowles joined the Caris Life Sciences Board of Directors in September 2009 and became Vice Chairman in January 2010. Knowles' distinguished career has spanned decades in both academia and the pharmaceutical industry, including president of group research at Roche and member of the Roche Corporate Executive Committee. Knowles also served on the Board of Directors for Genentech and Chugai Pharmaceuticals.

"We were very excited to learn that Jonathan is the recipient of the 2015 Luminary Award from the PMWC. Jonathan has had a remarkable career and has left an indelible mark with his contributions to science and personalized medicine," said David D. Halbert, Chairman and CEO of Caris Life Sciences. "Jonathan is a pivotal member of our Board and he is actively providing strategic insights to enable the delivery of precision medicine and helping shape the future of our proprietary Carisome® TOP™ technology to create novel therapeutics, and enhance drug delivery and drug target identification for cancer and other complex diseases."

Knowles previously served as the chairman of the Research Directors' Group of EFPIA (European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industry Associations) and was the founding chairman of the board of the Innovative Medicines Initiative, a unique public-private partnership between 28 pharmaceutical companies and the European Commission with a budget of more than two billion euros to foster and drive innovation in medicine.

Knowles is also a professor emeritus of translational medicine at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland, a visiting chair at the University of Oxford and held distinguished professorship in personalized healthcare at the Finnish Institute for Molecular Medicine at the University of Helsinki. In addition, he is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization and a William Pitt Fellow of Pembroke College Cambridge.

Past recipients of PMWC award include Dr. Leroy Hood, co-inventor of the first DNA sequencer,
Dr. George Church, co-developer of the Human Genome Project, Dr. Brian Druker, the co-inventor of the blockbuster drug Gleevec®, among others.

About Caris Life Sciences®
Caris Life Sciences® is a leading biotechnology company focused on fulfilling the promise of precision medicine through quality and innovation. The company is developing its Carisome® TOP™ technology, a revolutionary and proprietary blood-based platform for the development of novel therapeutics, drug delivery and drug target identification. The technology is also being developed for diagnosis, prognosis, and theranosis of cancer and other complex diseases. Caris Molecular Intelligence®, the company's healthcare information and comprehensive tumor profiling service with more than 70,000 patients profiled, provides oncologists with the most potentially clinically actionable treatment options available to personalize cancer care today. Using a variety of advanced profiling technologies to assess relevant biological changes in each patient's tumor, Caris Molecular Intelligence connects biomarker data generated from a tumor with biomarker-drug associations supported by evidence in the relevant clinical literature. Tracking patients since 2009, Caris has demonstrated that those patients treated with drugs consistent with their molecular profile show a significant increase in overall survival. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, Caris Life Sciences offers services throughout Europe, the U.S., Australia and other international markets. To learn more, please visit www.CarisLifeSciences.com.

About Personalized Medicine World Conference
The Personalized Medicine World Conference (PMWC) is an independent and established conference that attracts recognized authorities and experts across healthcare and biotechnology sectors. The Conference showcases practical content that helps close the knowledge gap between different sectors, thereby catalyzing cross-functional collaboration to further adoption of personalized medicine in the clinic. To learn more, www.pmwcintl.com.

SOURCE Caris Life Sciences