NEW YORK(GenomeWeb) – California Gov. Jerry Brown today announced a state initiative to advance precision medicine with $3 million in startup funds.
The initiative, called the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine, will be led by the University of California, San Francisco with participation from the UC system, and will collaborate with public and industry partners. They will start building an infrastructure that brings together resources to advance data, tools, and applications to the practice of precision medicine. UCSF will host the two-year project in conjunction with UC Health.
The initiative will develop two demonstration projects in disease areas in which the university system and its partners have expertise. The work, Brown's office said, could eventually shed light on why different patients with the same disease may have different responses to the same drugs, as well as why certain diseases, including heart, lung, and kidney disease, and asthma, affect racial and ethnic groups differently.
Additionally, the project will "inventory" the public and private precision medicine projects in California and bring together experts in medicine, technology, privacy, bioethics, and intellectual property to ensure that data and knowledge is shared safely.
Brown had already appropriated $3 million in his budget for 2014-2015 for precision medicine projects in the state.