New task force on personalized medicine takes interdisciplinary approach

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It cost over $3 billion and took almost 13 years to sequence the human genome for the first time, a task that was only completed a little over ten years ago.

Instead of our current one-size-fits all treatment for most diseases, many envision a future in which we will be able to tailor medical treatment based on ones underlying genetic information, a medical model known as personalized, or precision, medicine.

To better understand what it will take to reach these aims, which will require further advances in many disciplines and have implications stretching far beyond the field of medicine, University President Lee Bollinger recently announced the creation of a task force on personalized medicine.

When there are major advances in our knowledge that can be translated in very important effects for the world, we want to make sure as the university we are doing everything we can to facilitate that, Bollinger said at last weeks University Senate plenary.

The task force, co-chaired by Provost John Coatsworth and Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine Lee Goldman, brings together almost 40 faculty members across the entire university. Unlike other institutions, including various cancer centers, that are also working in personalized medicine, this task force will use a University-wide approach, rather than just a medical one.

The opportunity is really here now

They have the foresight to realize that this is not just a medical center problem, that this really permeates every different aspect of what we do at Columbia, said Dr. Wendy Chung, director of the Clinical Genetics Program at the Columbia University Medical Center and member of the task force. Its going to be challenging, I think, to get people who speak different languages to come together and to realize what they can contribute but Ive never seen any other initiative where so many people have come together to try and make it work.

Though the task force has yet to meet, it plans to produce a report next fall that outlines what Columbia should do in this emerging field of medicine.

Its almost certainly one of those things that you cant just leave to chance to happen. You have to get organized, you have to get the infrastructure, you have to figure out the kinds of intellectual work that you need to do, Bollinger said.

Personalized medicine will ultimately be the result of a more comprehensive understanding of the genetic underpinnings of disease, but to get to that point, researchers need more data than is currently available.

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New task force on personalized medicine takes interdisciplinary approach

Lake Nona's Medical City opens new stage of development with town center

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Lake Nona's Medical City is embarking on its next stage of development an ambitious lineup of office, hotel and retail buildings that will support the community's medical school, hospitals and research centers.

The Tavistock Group, which is developing Lake Nona, expects to start work on the first phase of its town center in May, with completion by mid-2015. More than $150 million worth of construction will be underway on the project, which is near the University of Central Florida's College of Medicine.

The town center will include a hotel, office building, restaurants and parking garage. An apartment complex is planned, too. But the office space won't be limited to health care. Pushing beyond the Medical City label, developers are open to leasing space to technology companies and other non-medical businesses.

The commercial boom has been long awaited at Lake Nona and its budding Medical City. The project captured national headlines in 2006 when it landed what is now the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute. UCF built its medical school there, and the Nemours Children's Hospital opened in 2012.

Construction delays have stymied its biggest anchor, however the $656 million VA Medical Center, which is two years behind schedule and is expected to open next spring.

While the gleaming medical centers have risen at Lake Nona, services to support them have been slower in coming. Researchers at Sanford-Burnham, for instance, would have to drive four or five miles for a sub sandwich.

"I look at the cup as half full. It's a shame the VA is late because there's so many people in need," said Jim Zboril, president of Lake Nona Properties Holdings. "For us, though, the delays have let us get our housing program into full swing and get all of our builders more ready for this activity."

Lake Nona ended last year with by far the largest number of single-family housing starts in the four-county Metro Orlando area 441 for the fourth quarter, according to MetroStudy. The next busiest project, Sawgrass Plantation in Orange County, had fewer than half that number.

New apartments have emerged as well. Developers last year completed the $40 million Watermark apartments, with 278 units. In May, contractors will start on a 300-unit apartment complex next to the initial phase of the town center at Tavistock Lakes and Lake Nona boulevards.

The city of Orlando is reviewing plans for the town center, and the project is on track to get started in about two months, Zboril said. Anchoring the initial phase will be a long-discussed 200-room hotel building that will house both a Marriott Residence Inn and a Courtyard by Marriott.

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Lake Nona's Medical City opens new stage of development with town center

Harry Cooper – Hitler & Eva Braun Lived Out Their Days In Argentina Radio Liberty 2.24.14 – Video

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Harry Cooper - Hitler Eva Braun Lived Out Their Days In Argentina Radio Liberty 2.24.14
We are all taught that the Red Army surrounded Berlin and that, faced with capture by the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler and his new wife Eva Braun (Hitler) comm...

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Harry Cooper - Hitler & Eva Braun Lived Out Their Days In Argentina Radio Liberty 2.24.14 - Video