VUMC part of major step to achieving precision medicine

An analysis of genomic data from nearly 250,000 participants in the National Institutes of Health’s Research Program has identified more than 275 million previously unreported genetic variations, nearly 4 million of which have potential health consequences. The data, reported Feb. 19 in the journal , constitutes a research resource that is unprecedented in its scale and diversity, as 77% of the participants historically have been underrepresented in biomedical research, and 46% are from underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities.

UCLA biobank study reveals disease risk, heath care use among LA’s diverse population

The research underscores the limitations of the health care system’s frequent reliance on broad self-reported race and ethnicity data to assess patients’ risk of developing disease, and the findings also support expanding genetic screening to more groups.

IU neuroscientists lead new study laying groundwork for Alzheimer’s disease precision medicine

A 5-year, $41 million study will help researchers better understand the biological pathways underlying Alzheimer’s disease and ultimately create more personalized patient care through the development of a blood test for multiple pathways implicated in the disease – enabling earlier and less-invasive diagnosis.

An extra X chromosome-linked gene may explain decreased viral infection severity in females

Researchers may have found why viral infections hit males more severely than females. They found that female mouse and human NK cells have an extra copy of an X chromosome-linked gene called UTX. UTX acts as an epigenetic regulator to boost NK cell anti-viral function, while repressing NK cell numbers.

UChicago Medicine-led team selected for the 2022 Michael & Lori Milken Family Foundation-PCF Challenge Award to develop novel immunotherapy approaches in advanced prostate cancer

The Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) has awarded a $1 million grant to a renowned specialist at the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Soldiers in Recovery from Alcohol Use Disorder Who Experience Cardiovascular Withdrawal Symptoms May Benefit from Medication Targeting Brain Stress Response

Prazosin, a medication FDA-approved for hypertension and used off-label for alcohol use disorder, may help prevent drinking relapse in people with cardiovascular or behavioral symptoms of alcohol withdrawal, according to a new study involving active-duty soldiers.

Muscle Models Mimic Diabetes, Inform Personalized Medicine

Scientists are using in vitro skeletal muscle engineering to gain a better understanding of the complex genetic and environmental factors underlying diabetes, putting lab-grown, healthy skeletal muscle tissues in a state resembling diabetes or growing skeletal muscle from diabetic patients’ muscle stem cells. In Biophysics Reviews, researchers describe how skeletal muscle engineering has advanced significantly during the past few decades and recent developments that make it easier to explore diabetes in humans and have led to more personalized medicine.

Artificial Intelligence in Personalized Medicine, Genomic Sequencing Advances, Human Brain Organogenesis, Building Trust with Patients, Guiding Patient Decisions with Mass Spectrometry, and Much More to Be Explored at 2022 AACC

At the 2022 AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo, laboratory medicine experts will present the cutting-edge research and technology that is revolutionizing clinical testing and patient care.

New Understanding of Congenital Heart Disease Progression Opens Door to Improved Treatment Options

A team of investigators from Texas Heart Institute, Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine uncovered new insights into the mechanisms underlying the progression of congenital heart disease (CHD) ― a spectrum of heart defects that develop before birth and remain the leading cause of childhood death.

Penn Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Announce Partnership with Costa Rica for CAR T Cell Therapy

Penn Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), who together pioneered the research and development of the world’s first personalized cellular therapy for cancer — also known as CAR T cell therapy — have announced plans with Costa Rica’s CCSS, or the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (Social Security Program), to facilitate CAR T research in Costa Rica.

Personalized medicine research focuses on Hispanics with diabetes in South Texas

A team of researchers studying genetic data to identify hormone responses in a population of Mexican Americans with prediabetes, Type 2 diabetes, and obesity recently received a $3.5 million grant to fund a five-year study set to begin in late 2021.

$2.1 Million Gift Launches Comprehensive Breast Cancer Database

Philanthropists Richard and Carol Dean Hertzberg have committed $2.1 million to develop and maintain the Dean-Hertzberg Breast Cancer Database System Initiative at UC San Diego Health Moores Cancer Center to support the work of Anne Wallace, MD and her collaborators at Moores Cancer Center.

Scientists Create a Labor-Saving Automated Method for Studying Electronic Health Records

Scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai described the creation of a new, automated, artificial intelligence-based algorithm that can learn to read patient data from electronic health records. In a side-by-side comparison, they showed that their method, called Phe2vec (FEE-to-vek), accurately identified patients with certain diseases as well as the traditional, “gold-standard” method, which requires much more manual labor to develop and perform

UCLA Health receives $4.8M NIH grant to improve genetic estimates of disease risk in diverse populations

UCLA Health will receive a $4.8 million grant from The National Institutes of Health to develop methods that will improve genetic risk estimates – polygenic risk scores – for specific diseases in people from diverse populations and mixed ancestries.

New wiki on salivary proteins may transform diagnostic testing and personalized medicine

To improve the development of new saliva-based diagnostic tests and personalized medicine, the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) has supported the development of the Human Salivary Proteome Wiki, the first public platform that catalogs and curates data on each of the thousands of proteins within our saliva.

UB pharmacy researcher aims to develop real-time algorithm to lower hospital readmission rates

To lower hospital readmission rates for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), University at Buffalo pharmacy researcher David Jacobs has received a $962,000 award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to develop a real-time readmission risk prediction algorithm.

Immunomics: A Conversation on the Future of Diagnostics with Ramy Arnaout

In a recent perspective article, pathologists outline how the immunome — all of the genes collectively expressed by an individual’s immune cells — holds the potential to provide researchers and physicians with unprecedented insight into an individual’s health. Collecting that information from large numbers of patients could one day facilitate diagnostics via a near-universal blood test and pave the way to targeted therapies for a wide variety of conditions.

Mount Sinai Doctors Elected to National Academy of Medicine for Contributions to Emergency Medicine and Translational Genetics

Brendan G. Carr, MD, MA, MS, and Judy H. Cho, MD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, have been elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM).

Researchers Use Lab-grown Tissue Grafts for Personalized Joint Replacement

A multidisciplinary team from Columbia Engineering, Columbia’s College of Dental Medicine and Department of Medicine, Louisiana State University, LaCell LLC, and Obatala Sciences has now bioengineered living cartilage-bone temporomandibular joint grafts, precisely matched to the recipient, both biologically and anatomically. Their new study, published today in Science Translational Medicine, builds upon a long series of their previous work on bioengineering functional cartilage and bone for regenerative medicine and tissue models of disease.

Phosphoprotein biomarkers to guide cancer therapy are identified

Post-translational modification analysis may broadly identify new biomarkers of cancer drivers for a much more precise prediction of patient responses to treatments. A recent study demonstrates this diagnostic alternative for neuroendocrine neoplasms driven by a protein kinase called Cdk5.

First-of-its-Kind Personalized ‘COVID-19 Risk Score’ Launches to Enable Safer Re-opening and Return to Work Plans

Coriell Life Sciences is rolling out a new tool in the fight against COVID-19: personalized COVID-19 Risk Scores designed to enable safer re-opening and return to work plans (especially given the recent release of the CDC guidelines for re-opening).

Precision medicine guides choice of better drug therapy in severe heart disease

Is personalized medicine cost-effective? Researchers have answered that question for one medical treatment, genotype-guided antiplatelet therapy for acute coronary syndrome patients with PCI. Their study uses pharmacogenomics and economic analysis of real-world clinical data.

Coriell Researchers Identify SNP Associated with Obesity Risk

Obesity is among the most common complex diseases in the United States and has been a stubborn public health challenge for decades. Its causes are wide ranging, but genetic heritability is increasingly understood to be an influential factor in determining a person’s risk for the disease. Coriell researchers have found a new genetic indicator of obesity risk and bolstered the understood importance of one gene’s role in obesity risk.

Superior “Bio-Ink” for 3D Printing Pioneered

Rutgers biomedical engineers have developed a “bio-ink” for 3D printed materials that could serve as scaffolds for growing human tissues to repair or replace damaged ones in the body. Their study was published in the journal Biointerphases.

Weizmann Scientists Devise New Algorithm that Predicts Gestational Diabetes

Using machine learning to analyze data on nearly 600,000 pregnancies, researchers devised an algorithm that identified nine parameters – out of more than 2,000 analyzed – that can predict which women are at risk of gestational diabetes. The parameters can identify risk early in – even before – pregnancy, enabling early intervention.

Grant to help UniSA researchers develop personalised cancer treatment

Personalised cancer treatment is one step closer to becoming a reality for more patients, thanks to a Cancer Council Beat Cancer Project grant awarded to University of South Australia researcher Dr Stephanie Reuter Lange to explore how computer-based modelling can optimise cancer treatment and remove the need for expensive clinical trials.

Genetic Breakthrough Identifies Heart Failure Risk in African and Latino Americans

Findings may inform genetic screening test for patients at risk and medically under-served

Updated Genetic Screening Guidelines Published by National Comprehensive Cancer Network Feature Emerging Evidence on Personalized Medicine

NCCN Guidelines for Genetic/Familial Risk Assessment: Breast, Ovarian, and Pancreatic updated with new and expanded sections on risk assessment and management related to three major cancer types.

FAU Schmidt College of Medicine Launches Genomics and Predictive Health Certificate

The lack of understanding of health providers and patients is a major barrier to the integration of genomics into personalized medicine. This innovative certificate program will provide health professionals and scientists with the requisite skills they need to interpret and incorporate this new knowledge into a patient care model that emphasizes individually tailored prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

Ohio State’s Heart and Vascular Center Names 2019 Schottenstein Laureate

The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center’s Heart and Vascular Center has named Dr. Dan Roden, senior vice president for Personalized Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, as recipient of the 2019 Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Prize in Cardiovascular Sciences.