Collaboration for Genomic-Based Prospective Medicine

A formal collaboration to create the first fully integrated, comprehensive practice of genomic-based prospective medicine has been announced by the Center for the Advancement of Genomics (TCAG, Rockville, MD, USA) and Duke University Medical Center (Durham, NC, USA). The two groups will work together, utilizing correlations between comprehensive genomic and medical data relevant to prediction, early detection, and prevention of disease.

Plans call for focused research in genomic predictors of cardiovascular, hematologic, and infectious diseases; the design of future clinical practice models, including personalized health planning; and strategies to tackle ethical and legal issues that will arise as a result of advances in genomics. Detailed planning is now under way. Specific goals include the following: to integrate high-throughput DNA sequencing and analysis with medical expertise by re-sequencing and genotyping selected patients from Duke Medical Center, to focus initially on major disease areas as well as cancer, to create a futuristic personalized health plan and medical record, and to leverage the high-end computing center TCAG is building that will allow the sequencing of 45 billion base pairs of DNA per year.

"One of my reasons for wanting to sequence the human genome more rapidly was to get to this point in history where genomics could begin to be used to better understand and potentially treat or prevent human disease,” said J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., president and chairman of TCAG.

"The current American health care system is driven more by tradition than by scientific principles and is inherently wasteful,” remarked R. Sanders Williams, M.D., dean of the Duke University School of Medicine. "By incorporating scientific advances, such as genomics, into new models of prospective health care delivery, we can improve outcomes while controlling costs.”




Related Links:
Center for the Advancement of Genomics
Duke Med. Center