The Obama Administration unveiled an ambitious new research initiative last week as part of the President’s Precision Medicine Initiative, a project geared towards creating disease treatments based on an individual’s genetic signature.
The White House will grant an estimated $55 million to the National Institute of Health, which will lead the charge on analyzing any connection between a specific disease and a person’s genetic information in a program called the PMI Cohort Program.
One of the primary objectives of this project focuses on obtaining DNA samples from about 1 million Americans that could provide physicians with a comprehensive understanding of how different pathogens impact patients.
The hope is that this research could yield a comprehensive genomic database filled with clinical information and patient data that will help members of the medical community understand how certain diseases can form and then come up with personalized treatments that could eradicate the illness.
Four institutions: Columbia University, Northwestern University, University of Arizona, and University of Pittsburgh will help the NIH in this particular endeavor. The schools will be responsible for enrolling patients and establishing research standards, according to Fortune.
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Also, the NIH is bringing on a number of healthcare groups located in smaller cities that will increase this study’s reach and provide a more diverse population of patients as well.
Other aspects of this investment from the White House include modernizing the regulatory process for genomic testing. The Food and Drug Administration will launch a new platform for researchers to compare the accuracy and efficacy of results from DNA sequencing.
