NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Weill Cornell Medical College and New York-Presbyterian Hospital have partnered to launch a new institute that will pursue genome-centered translational medicine to deliver personalized care.
The Institute for Precision Medicine at the New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City will invest in genome sequencing and a biobank and hire bioinformaticians to analyze patient data in an effort to target treatments to individuals.
Weill Cornell and NYP said today that the personalized medical treatments they develop at the new institute will be tested in clinical trials for treating diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases, and other disorders.
The partners plan to target specific genomic alterations to create more effective treatments, to use genomic analyses of tumor tissue to help patients with advanced cancer who currently have no treatment options, and to pinpoint the causes of drug resistance in patients who fail to respond to treatments.
The new institute will be headed by NYP-Weill Cornell pathology and urology Professor Mark Rubin, current director of Translational Research Laboratory Services, who has focused on using whole-genome sequencing in the lab to study genetic mutations involved in prostate cancer and other diseases.
"We will use advanced technology and the collective wealth of knowledge from our clinicians, basic scientists, pathologists, molecular biologists, and computational biologists to pinpoint the molecular underpinnings of disease — information that will spur the discovery of novel treatments and therapies," Rubin said in a statement.