Vanderbilt University Medical Center has received a five-year, $12.8 million grant from the federal government to develop better ways to predict how patients will respond to the drugs they’re given.

The Precision Medicine Initiative is a national effort announced by President Obama during his State of the Union address to provide more effective treatment and prevention strategies for individuals by taking into account their unique genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors.

Dan Roden, M.D., assistant vice chancellor for Personalized Medicine, has been appointed to the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Tacrolimus is essential for patients receiving new hearts, kidneys and other organ transplants. The drug suppresses the body’s immune system, helping to prevent rejection.

Since it was founded in 1963, the Vanderbilt Division of Clinical Pharmacology has pioneered “translational science” and continues to transform medical practice worldwide, speakers at the division’s 50th anniversary scientific symposium said last week.

Dan Roden, M.D., assistant vice chancellor for Personalized Medicine and William Stokes Professor of Experimental Therapeutics, received a 2012 Distinguished Scientist Award at the annual Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association (AHA) last week in Los Angeles.

During a meeting in Nashville last week, the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) called on academic medical centers to make the case for continued, strong federal investment in biomedical research.