An in-depth feature in the Star-Ledger, New Jersey's leading newspaper, details Coriell's efforts in personalized medicine, as well as the Institute's promising new alliance with the United States Air Force.
Reporter Seth Augenstein covered Coriell's recently-announced partnership with the USAF, outlining the Patient-Centered Precision Care Research Program, an undertaking that aims to enroll 2,000 Air Force Medical Service members.
The article, "Spitting Image: DNA Stored at Coriell Institute Helps Fight Disease From Past, and Those in Future," quotes the Air Force's director of the program, Lieutenant Colonel (Dr.) Cecili Sessions, who says, "We are confident that Coriell will deliver first-in-class research on behalf of the PC2-Z program."
Sponsored by the USAF and conducted by the Coriell Personalized Medicine Collaborative (CPMC) research study team, in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), the clinical utility study proposes to examine how providing people with personal genetic information for potentially actionable medical conditions and drug response influences health outcomes.
The scope and ambition of PC2-Z are truly unique, as noted by leading expert in translational genomics Robert Green, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard University and a member of Coriell's Informed Cohort Oversight Board. "It is, to my knowledge, the first situation where a branch of the armed forces would sign up to give genetic information," he says.
The piece also provides a comprehensive overview of the work taking place at Coriell, including the Institute's world-renowned biobank and the stem cell laboratory's progressive study of induced pluripotent stem cells. "We can take a skin cell, reverse-engineer it back into a stem cell, then make it into a heart cell and watch it actually beat in a dish," adds Dr. Michael Christman, PhD, Coriell's president and CEO.
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