The United States has proposed analysing genetic information from more than one million volunteers as part of a new initiative to understand human disease. <\/p>\n
The proposal also includesdeveloping medicines targeted to an individual's genetic make-up. <\/p>\n
At the heart of the \"precision medicine\" initiative, announcedby President Barack Obama, is the creation of a pool of people - healthy and ill, men and women, old and young - who would be studied to learn how genetic variants affect health and disease. <\/p>\n
Officials hope genetic data from several hundred thousand participants in ongoing genetic studies would be used and other volunteers recruited to reach the onemillion total. <\/p>\n
\"Precision medicine gives us one of the greatest opportunities for new medical breakthroughs we've ever seen,\" Mr Obama said, promising that it would \"lay a foundation for a new era of life-saving discoveries.\" <\/p>\n
The near-term goal is to create more and better treatments for cancer, DrFrancis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), told reporters on a conference call on Thursday. <\/p>\n
Longer term, he said, the project would provide information on how to individualise treatment for a range of diseases. <\/p>\n
The initial focus on cancer, he said, reflects the lethality of the disease and the significant advances against cancer that precision medicine has already made, though more work is needed. <\/p>\n
The president proposed $215 million in his 2016 budget for the initiative. <\/p>\n
Of that, $130 million would go to the NIH to fund the research cohort and $70 million to NIH's National Cancer Institute to intensify efforts to identify molecular drivers of cancer and apply that knowledge to drug development. <\/p>\n
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US launches precision medicine research project<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The United States has proposed analysing genetic information from more than one million volunteers as part of a new initiative to understand human disease. The proposal also includesdeveloping medicines targeted to an individual's genetic make-up. At the heart of the \"precision medicine\" initiative, announcedby President Barack Obama, is the creation of a pool of people - healthy and ill, men and women, old and young - who would be studied to learn how genetic variants affect health and disease Continue reading