CLEMSON, SC (FOX Carolina) - Stopping disease before it starts, changing DNA, finding treatments and reversing debilitating disorders, are all types of personalized medicine that may arrive in the not-too distant future. Researchers at Clemson University are on the front lines of making it happen.

The work is in beginning stages, using Clemson's super computer, The Palmetto Cluster, for complex calculations, but doctors and patients expect the work to change their world.

It's a change that Connor Raymond's family can't see come soon enough.

Even as a baby, now-six-year-old Connor's parents knew something wasn't quite right. His mom, Katia Luedtke, remembers that he was missing milestones that typical babies made. She said that by six-months-old, Connor couldn't sit up, roll over, or hold his head up.

After years of testing, Connor was diagnosed with Snyder-Robinson Syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects the body and intellectual capacity.

As one of just 821 in the world with Snyder-Robinson, Connor's family was astonished to find that Dr. Emil Alexov, at Clemson University's Department of Physics, was studying their son's disorder.

Alexov and his team of post-doctorate fellows use computer modeling to analyze individual DNA molecules in people with many different mental disorders. He said they're trying to figure out how small differences in DNA affects human health.

Since each molecule is made of hundreds of thousands of atoms, the team needs The Palmetto Cluster to make millions of computations. On a regular computer, that could take years, but even on the super computer, one calculation could take a couple weeks.

Alexov said the most important part is to figure out how the molecule acts when it's healthy and when it's not. That, he said, will bring them closer to developing treatment.

Eventually, they want to physically fix a genetic difference.

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Clemson researchers work to change DNA, prevent disease