Speaker Profile
Ph.D., VP of Clinical Affairs and Partnerships, Claret Bioscience
Biography
Dr. Varsha Rao is the VP of Partnerships and Clinical Affairs at ClaretBio. She oversees the clinical applications of the novel next-generation sequence assays and analytical pipelines developed at ClaretBio with a main focus on evaluating the utility of cell-free DNA fragmentation patterns in cancer progression and treatment response monitoring. Before joining ClaretBio, she was a Research Scientist at Stanford University School of Medicine in Prof Michael Snyder's lab. As a part of multiple consortia such as the Integrative Personalized Omics Profiling Project, the Human Microbiome Project and the NASA Twins Study she has worked on longitudinal multiomic analyses, focusing on applying transcriptomics and liquid biopsy approaches to understand nuances of metabolic diseases, cancer, infectious disease and general health. She received her PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from University of Maryland Baltimore County in 2012.
Talk
cfDNA fragmentomics with ClaretBio's SRSLY
In this talk, Dr. Rao will describe the utility of ClaretBio's single-stranded library preparation SRSLY, in cfDNA fragmentomics using a combination of cfDNA length profile and native termini. This approach allow capture of disease informative, differential signal at low-depth of sequencing.
Session Abstract – PMWC 2025 Silicon Valley
Track Chair: Adrian Lee, UPMC
- PMWC Award Ceremony
Pioneer Honoree: Victor Velculescu, Johns Hopkins
Luminary Honoree: Nicola Aceto, ETH Zurich
- Keynote: Early Detection of Cancer using Cell-free DNA Fragmentomes
- Victor Velculescu, Johns Hopkins - Keynote: Circulating Tumor Cells
- Nicola Aceto, ETH Zurich - Innovative Approaches in Liquid Biopsy (PANEL)
Chair: Victor Velculescu, Johns Hopkins
- Adam Widman, MSKCC
- Improving Sensitivity of MRD and MCED - Tumor-agnostic vs. Tumor-informed ctDNA Approaches
Chair: Adrian Lee, University of Pittsburgh
- Marija Balic, UPMC
- Ola Carl Landgren, University of Miami - Sequencing Accuracy in Early Detection and MRD (PANEL)
Chair: Alex Sockell, PacBio
- James Hadfield, AstraZeneca
- Cristian Tomasetti, City of Hope
- Circulating Tumor Cells: The New Frontier (PANEL)
Chair: Nicola Aceto, ETH Zurich
- Min Yu, University of Maryland School of Medicine
- Matteo Ligorio, UTSW - Addressing Key Challenges and Questions in MCED Testing: Clinical Validation, Overdiagnosis, and Diagnostic Pathways
Chair: Tom Beer, Exact Sciences
- PMWC Showcase
- Wendy Winckler, Droplet Biosciences - Multi-Cancer Early Detection: Innovations and Real-World Evidence (PANEL)
Chair: Peter Bach, Delphi Dx
- Joshua Cohen, Haystack
- Lauren Leiman, BLOODPAC
- Josh Ofman, Grail Bio
- Tom Beer, Exact Sciences - PMWC Showcase
- Varsha Rao, Claret Bio
