Sleep-Circadian Biomarkers Workshop

Summary
The goal of the workshop is to discuss sleep-circadian biomarkers and ways to facilitate international collaboration.

The sessions will be very interactive, with 4 Panel Leaders who will introduce each their topics of discussion and frame the issues and then lead breakout groups that include themselves and 4 additional discussants per breakout group.

Following the breakout there will be a brief presentation by each panel breakout leader, and then broader discussion which will include participants from all breakout groups, including discussants and broader audience members.

Finally, the Panelists will present once more to the larger group, the consensus, and/or key observations of the critical next steps for their panel’s topic of discussion.

Panel Breakout 1
Biomarker development is an iterative process which starts with smaller samples of extreme cases, and moves to general populations. The sleep circadian field has begun to work on biomarker development for these use cases with deeply phenotyped small samples and has identified candidates for further omics developments. What kinds of extreme cases have been fruitful and what are the major limitations and needs for next steps?

Panel Breakout 2
What resolution of time is desirable to pinpoint with a biomarker?
Will circadian identification require multiple systems markers?

Panel Breakout 3
Selecting methods, sharing expertise, experts and data – What has been standardized in the omics? What are current barriers? How can we identify individuals with the big data expertise and model development expertise that is needed? How can we share resources and harmonize data?

Panel Breakout 4
How (much) to get involved in the contract process locally – from sponsors to academic institutions. What are barriers to data sharing and how can they be overcome so that progress towards useful biomarkers can be made available for international use?

Chairs
Janet Mullington (United States); Eilis Boudreau (United States)