Grant bolsters VU personalized medicine efforts
Vanderbilt University’s efforts in personalized medicine — health care that is tailored to each individual’s genetic makeup — are getting a new boost from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI).
NHGRI is awarding $25 million over the next four years to a network of institutions, including Vanderbilt, to discover links between genetic information and disease characteristics/symptoms in electronic medical records, and to use the findings to improve patient care.
Dan Roden, M.D., assistant vice chancellor for Personalized Medicine, has led Vanderbilt’s participation in the eMERGE (electronic MEdical Records and GEnomics) network since its launch in 2007.
Dan Roden, M.D.
Vanderbilt also serves as the administrative coordinating center for the network, under the leadership of Jonathan Haines, Ph.D., director of the Center for Human Genetics Research.
Jonathan Haines, Ph.D.
“Vanderbilt’s commitment to the idea of personalized health care – including our DNA bank BioVU, one of the largest of its kind in the world – has put us into a leadership position in this area nationally,” Roden said.
“Our ability to contribute effectively to the first phase of eMERGE was due in no small part to the collaboration of a very talented group of Vanderbilt investigators with a wide range of skills, including genomics, informatics, translational medicine, statistics and ethics.”
In its first phase, which wrapped up this year, the eMERGE network identified genetic variants associated with higher risk for dementia, cataracts, cardiac conduction, peripheral arterial disease and type 2 diabetes.
In the next phase, investigators will identify genetic variants associated with 40 more disease characteristics and symptoms, using genome-wide association methods to screen the entire genome for variations. About 32,000 participants will be included in each study, which will point to the genes that cause or contribute to diseases – information that can be used to guide clinical care.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center is already using genomic information to personalize patient care.
All patients undergoing cardiac catheterization are tested for a genetic variation that can affect their response to a blood-thinner that many of them will end up taking. The genetic information is placed in their electronic medical records to help their physicians choose the drug and dose that is best for them.
Investigators in the eMERGE network have also developed privacy protection methods to reduce the risk of identifying patients in the studies, and they have explored public concerns about genomic research and electronic medical records.
“We are developing best practices and policies to determine how best to use patient information for research or patient care,” said Teri Manolio, M.D., Ph.D., director of NHGRI’s Office of Population Genomics, which administers the eMERGE network.
Other sites participating in the network are Group Health Cooperative with the University of Washington, Northwestern University, Geisinger Weis Center for Research, Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation, Mayo Clinic and Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
For more information, visit www.genome.gov/27540473.