B2Bioworld, an online business and technology publication, spotlights Coriell in an in-depth discussion with Institute President and CEO, Dr. Michael Christman.
The free-ranging conversation is captured in a piece titled, "Turning Research on Human Genotyping into Healthcare Routine," and canvasses the Coriell Personalized Medicine Collaborative research study, the important strides being made in the field of pharmacogenomics, and the potential of personalized medicine to constructively change how doctors treat their patients.
"In the future it will be simple for physicians opening a patient's electronic medical record to see that they can order a whole-genome sequence on a patient," predicts Dr. Christman. He theorizes that doctors will simply be required to procure a blood or saliva sample from their patient, submit that sample to a sequencing company for analysis, and then adapt the information to the clinical setting after its been interpreted by an academic or medical center.
"A physician, say in a small town in the middle of America, who has a patient with breast cancer, will be able to get an interpretation developed by experts at a place like Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center on the East Coast, without having to leave his or her own office," he says.
Dr. Christman also talks about meeting the challenge of storing genetic data and shares his view on the significance of more affordable and accessible genetic sequencing options.
"What you're going to see is a much more massive amount of genetic data generated quickly over the next several years as people get their full genome sequenced," he says. "If the observational data sets are massive, powerful enough for statistical analyses, and include genetic and non-genetic components, then we'll be able to identify correlations that are clinically meaningful."
