whoami

Hi ! I am ashish, but go by tp53

{ Read more about the tp53 gene here & at wikipedia here }

As you can probably already tell, i am extremely passionate(some would say obsessed :D !) with all things cancer & oncology - spanning cancer genomics, ml accelerated protein design &drug discovery, clinical trials, radiation oncology treatment planning, to palliative care. Finding drugs & therapies for cancer (& other diseases, especially rare genetic disorders & aggressive cancers like GBM, etc)

I trained as an engineer during my undergrad and then got a masters in computer engineering at Purdue(Hail Purdue !) However in the last 7-8 years, a variety of experiences in the family, and encounters with patients, doctors and life-changing books have inspired me to pursue a career at the intersection of tech(ml) & medicine-biology, especially cancer.

My north star - guiding mission in everything i do professionally(which i discovered rather late in life) is to impact medicine & disease, by :

1. Building tools & systems, for drug discovery, at the interface of ml + biology : Develop systems & tools to accelerate discovery of new drugs (which often takes of the order of decades, and still may fail in clinical trials or in the market), especially for cancers, for which no good therapies exists today
2. Building tools & systems, at the interface of ml + medicine/healthcare : Use the vast amount of biomedical data & ml/ai, to design systems, to help :

a. amplify productivity of clinicians by helping them make clinical decisions better, faster, cheaper.

b. patients become more engaged & involved in their care, customized to their custom medical literacy level & native language.

Papers on cancer i find interesting (in no particular order):

1. Why do patients with cancer die

my-notes-on-this-paper

1. From patterns to patients: Advances in clinical machine learning for cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment

my-notes-on-this-paper

theme: cancer drugs, drug discovery & clinical trials

1. Global Oncology Trends 2024 by IQVIA

2. A target map of clinical combination therapies in oncology: an analysis of clinicaltrials.gov

Some deep dives into drug discovery, which i love, most of them by the amazing Alex Telford & Asimov Press

1. The pharma industry from Paul Janssen to today: why drugs got harder to develop and what we can do about it

2. Some questions about biotech that I find interesting

3. Intelligence as efficient model building

4. A long but fascinating read on origins of the lab mouse, by Alex Telford, for Asimov Press (if you like this, please subscribe to Asimov Press & follow the amazing Niko Mccarty on twitter)

5. Why i should have loved biology (Read it ages ago, and rediscovered it thanks to a Niko McCarty tweet)

Theme: Rare genetic diseases(dx, therapies and management)

1. NYT piece on rare disease parents and families in India

2. One of my all time fav reads, on any topic

One of the most inspiring stories i ahve read, a true hero, Matt Might. Matt is an accomplished CS professor, and suddenly, their young son has strange symptoms, which no doctor can diagnose. The post chronicles, the diagnostic odyssey, typical of many rare disease families. And how Matt & his wife, drop everything and dive head first, to try to find a drug/therapy, for their son, Bertrand.

Hunting down my son’s killer by Matt Might

Unfortunately, Bertrand passed away in 2020. Here is a poignant piece by Matt Might, reflecting on Bertrand’s life & legacy

Some other pieces by Matt, that i keep going back to, and have forced me to reflect & introspect on my life & relationships :

a. Accepting the unacceptable

b. The algorithm for precision medicine

1. Another inspiring story of Rohan & Jen Seth’s daughter Lydia

a. Saving Lydia: Why I’m Open Sourcing My Baby To Save Her and Millions of Others

b. Saving Lydia: A Path from Diagnosis to Treatment in 3 months

c. Saving Lydia (Our Research Strategy)

1. Two non scientists, Eric & Sonia Vallabh, take the plunge into science, after Sonia tests positive for a genetic mutation for prion disease, which her mother died from

Another piece on Eric & Sonia, in SciAm

1. NYT piece on what life is like for rare disease parents & families, day to day

2. An Atlantic piece profiling the huge strides made in CF(Cystic Fibrosis) : from what was a guaranteed early death to now an almost normal lifespan

Also recommend the wonderfully researched book, Breath From Salt by Bijal P. Trivedi Very detailed, & at 615 pages, will take a while to read, but one gets a ringside view of the effort to find a drug/therapy for CF

Goodreads reviews

2 more books on rare disease, i really enjoyed !!! (both much shorter than Breath from Salt :D)

Chasing my cure by David Fajgenbaum

We the scientists by WSJ Pulitzer prize winning reprter, Amy Dockser Marcus

What do i do for leisure When i am not working - i enjoy long walks/runs, drinking chai, riding my bike(bicycle), watching (& someday performing ?) standup comedy, attending music performances & theatre, and spending time with family. I used to volunteer a lot more, and want to get back to doing that more often.