HonorHealth taps longevity authority Nicholas J. Schork to lead new research division

Nicholas J. Schork, Ph.D., an international authority on human longevity and health maintenance, has joined HonorHealth Research Institute as Research Director of Longevity, Prevention and Interception.

Dr. Schork heads a unique laboratory that is part of the Research Institute's newly created Center for Translational Science, and his appointment is part of a significant push on the part of the Institute to expand its collaborations and the realm of precision medicine possibilities; providing specific answers to individual patients with rare or difficult to treat diseases.

"It's all about optimizing people's health," said Dr. Schork, who has trained and worked at some of the nation's prominent health research facilities.

Disease is not like an off and on switch; one day you don't have disease and the next day you magically do have disease. There are processes that unfold over time that contribute to disease or reflect the pathobiology behind the disease. Research focusing on interception tries to understand those processes to the point where one can intervene on them, rather than the overt manifestations of the disease."

Nicholas J. Schork, PhD, Research Director of Longevity, Prevention and Interception, HonorHealth Research Institute

How medical interception works

For example, before treating a patient with some type of medication once they develop a specific cancer, physicians in the future might use new high-tech monitoring of a person's genome or some type of bodily fluid such as blood, saliva or even cerebral spinal fluid to find biomarkers that would indicate early on who might be at risk of cancer.

Such advanced interception warnings also might be attained through the use of wearable devices, imaging protocols – or anything that might provide more frequent monitoring. The physician then might recommend specific actions or medications an individual might take to avoid cancer altogether before it actually occurs and puts their overall health at risk.

Dr. Schork said he also will employ the use of Artificial Intelligence to interrogate large electronic health records with billions of points of data to synthesize complex information and offer recommendations based on identifying patterns invisible to human clinicians.

"Early AI evaluations show the potential to improve diagnostic accuracy, reduce errors, and personalize care pathways, provided they are validated in rigorous clinical settings," he said, pointing to the need for clinical efforts to bolster translational discoveries, and translational science to be practiced with patients in the clinical settings.

HonorHealth leadership enthusiastic

In welcoming Dr. Schork and his expertise to HonorHealth, Michael Gordon, M.D., FASCO, Medical Director of the Research Institute, said: "Ultimately, it's all about living longer, living better, reducing the risk of disease and promoting longevity. We want to emphasize prevention and interception - whether it's intercepting in the evolution of cardiovascular disease or intercepting in the evolution of cancer - we want to find more and more sensitive ways to diagnose disease earlier; to intervene before people develop a symptomatic disorder that compromises their function; their ability to live."

Mark Slater, Ph.D., CEO of the Research Institute, and Vice President of Research for HonorHealth, said Dr. Schork brings with him a wealth of collaborators and facilitators from across the nation and around the world, which among other things will enhance the Institute's partnership with Arizona State University's new School of Medicine and Advanced Medical Engineering.

"Nik is a brilliant mind who has really been at the forefront of developing new innovations and technologies," Dr. Slater said. "He is a terrific data scientist, and a person in the digital and informatics space who has brought together the basic and translational science into the clinical world across a number of different diseases."

Sunil Sharma, M.D., MBA, Director of the Center for Translational Science, said, "I have known Dr. Schork for several years now. He is a true renaissance man and I deeply value his unique investigational abilities, scientific rigor and imagination. In his new role, working alongside me at the Center, his computational genius will be a game-changing force for innovation at our Research Institute."

Dr. Schork's research background

Most recently, Dr. Schork held the positions of Distinguished Professor and Director of the Division of Clinical Genomics and Therapeutics at Phoenix's Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), a frequent clinical trial collaborator with the Institute.

He also held the titles of: Adjunct Professor of Population Sciences as well as Molecular and Cellular Biology at City of Hope; Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Biostatistics at the University of California San Diego; and Adjunct Professor of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology at Scripps Research Institute.

Prior to those positions, Dr. Schork was Professor and Director of Human Biology at the J. Craig Venter Institute; Professor, Molecular and Experimental Medicine, at Scripps Research, and Director of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics for the Scripps Translational Science Institute. Dr. Schork has also held faculty appointments at Case Western Reserve University and Harvard University.

Dr. Schork has published over 600 articles in many areas of biomedical and translation science, including articles detailing novel methodologies and applications leveraging integrated approaches to disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention, as well as clinical trials design. He also has a long history of collaborative and consortium-related research in which he has contributed analysis methodology and applied data analysis expertise.