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Johns Hopkins Center for Personalized Cancer
Medicine Research
In 2011, The Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center received a $30 million donation
from the Commonwealth Foundation for Cancer Research to fund a new center that
focuses on genomics and personalized oncology research. The Center has initially
undertaken pilot projects focused on DNA mutations and epigenetic alterations in
cells. Researchers at the center will study genomic and epigenomic factors that affect
leukemia and lung cancer patients’ responses to treatment and develop tests for early
detection of various types of cancer. The long-term aim will be the development of
individualized immunotherapies such as cancer vaccines and pharmacogenomics-
based treatment tools based on genetic discoveries.
Mayo Clinic’s Centers for Individualized Medicine
The Mayo Clinic (Rochester MN) was one of the fi rst academic hospitals in the US
to start personalized medicine programs. The clinic has a range of resources, includ-
ing genome sequencing, proteomics, and gene expression facilities. Translational
programs focus on biomarker discovery, clinical genomics, epigenomics, pharma-
cogenomics, and the microbiome. Infrastructure programs include a medical genom-
ics facility, biorepositories, bioinformatics resources, as well as bioethics and
education/training. Several projects in various therapeutic areas such as management
of hypertension and CLL have already applied a personalized medicine approach.
The Mayo Clinics in Arizona and Forida also have personalized programs.
The Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine and Whole Biome are col-
laborating to develop microbiome-targeted diagnostics. The initial focus will be on
women’s health, and in particular preterm labor. Mayo Clinic plans to develop a test
to enable the early indication of preterm labor.
In 2007, the Mayo Clinic, in collaboration with the IBM, set up Mayo Clinic Life
Sciences System, which is designed to include detailed digitalized genetic informa-
tion of patients. The trial helped physicians at the Mayo Clinic to work out the best
way to store a person’s genetic code, develop procedures to explain the information
to patients, and direct their medical care. Questions that arise are: who is going to
store the information, how is it going to be stored securely, who has access, and
what is going to happen to the information that the patient might not want to know
about? There are some signifi cant ethical and privacy issues, which are more diffi -
cult to solve than storing the information.
The Mayo Clinic launched a pilot study early in 2012 as part of a move towards
an era of “proactive genomics” that puts modern genetics at the center of patient
care. The project help managers at the clinic decide whether it makes sense to read
and store a patient’s WGS to start with instead of ordering single genetic tests as and
20 Development of Personalized Medicine