State of California launches US$3m initiative for advancing precision medicine
The programme may benefit from its proximity to companies handling big data and genetic information
Governor Jerry Brown is launching a statewide initiative with the University of California to advance the field of precision medicine. The effort will involve collaborating with other academic and industry partners and starting to build the infrastructure and assemble the resources necessary to further develop the field.
The goal is to integrate clinical data with genomic, environmental, socioeconomic, mobile and other data from patients so that scientists can understand diseases better and develop more precise therapies.
The California Initiative for Advancing Precision Medicine, follows the announcement by US President Barack Obama of the establishment of a US$215m precision medicine programme that will include a longitudinal study of around one million volunteers. It also follows similar initiatives in other countries, such as the UK’s programme to sequence the whole genomes of 100,000 patients enrolled in the UK National Health Service.
Keith Yamamoto, Vice-Chancellor for research at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), said: ‘The success of the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine depends upon finding ways to effectively collect and integrate diverse forms of data, from the very objective – genomic and molecular – to the more subjective – environmental influences and life experiences.’
The state plans to spend a total of $2.4m this year on two demonstration projects chosen from proposals submitted by University of California researchers. The state will spend another $600,000 to study the ethical, legal and social issues related to such tailored treatment, among other issues. Programme organisers plan to co-ordinate with the national precision-medicine initiative, Yamamoto says.