The Institute for Pharmacogenomics and Individualized Therapy (IPIT) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has honored Coriell Institute's President and CEO, Dr. Michael Christman, as this year's recipient of the Patient Service Award.
Given to visionary advocates of patients' rights and empowered clinical exchange, the IPIT award exemplifies excellence and innovation. Past winners include Muin J. Khoury, MD, PhD, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Office of Public Health Genomics, and Robert Epstein, MD, MS, a biomedical pioneer who has helped to expedite the practical application of pharmacogenomics by leading research studies on drug response.
Dr. Christman was selected due in part to his "leadership in the effort to assess how personalized genetic information can be used to improve people's health," says Richard Goldberg, MD, chair of the IPIT award committee. Dr. Christman received the award in November at the annual symposium and delivered a seminar detailing the progressive work taking place at Coriell.
In addition to the Patient Service Award, two other areas of therapy were recognized at this year's IPIT symposium: public and clinical service. David Goldstein, PhD, professor and director of Duke University's Center for Human Genome Variation, received the clinical service award. The public service award was presented to Dan Roden, MD, assistant vice chancellor for personalized medicine at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
