Personalized medicine goal of Lifespan executive

A top Lifespan administrator recently urged a government advisory group charged with growing the state’s science and technology sectors to jump into the global race to develop new health care plans based on patients’ genes.
Arthur Klein, Lifespan’s chief physician officer and senior vice president, is interested in a collaborative research project that would share decades of Brown University research on the health histories of Rhode Island families with Lifespan, the University of Rhode Island and pharmaceutical companies.
Brown’s work to track the health histories of Rhode Island families through three generations is part of a regional research project, and represents perhaps the most comprehensive clinical database of its kind in the United States. It is extremely valuable to researchers pioneering the field of “personalized medicine.”
As gene sequencing technology becomes faster and cheaper, doctors envision a day when they can easily map their patients’ DNA to learn their predispositions to heart disease, cancer and other diseases and prescribe medications to prevent or delay their onset.
Widespread patient DNA testing also would be extremely helpful to drug companies, enabling them to more quickly develop new medicines and learn which drugs might cause harmful side effects in some populations.
The advent of such “genetic interrogation” techniques is expected to revolutionize health care, Klein told members of the R.I. Science & Technology Advisory Council (STAC) on May 1.
“The impact … in terms of what drugs you use, how you save money in the health care system through early intervention, and how you program specific care is just absolutely monumental,” he said. “We have a terrific opportunity in our health care industry, at Brown and at URI, through this to do something extraordinary.”
Klein urged the advisory group to consider a collaborative research project using Brown’s database of family health histories moments after Clyde Briant, Brown’s vice president for research and STAC’s co-chairman, announced that Brown and URI had each pledged to contribute $25,000 to support STAC’s R.I. Research Alliance program.
Briant said STAC would use the $50,000 contribution from Brown and URI to create a plan that assesses the best opportunities for collaboration among the state’s major research organizations.
“That’s the purpose of the engagement plan and the funding that the two universities are putting together,” he said.
Klein, who is also the associate dean for strategic and special projects at Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School, was appointed to STAC’s governing board last October.
He said that scientists from the United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland and Germany who visited Providence for a recent biotechnology conference were incredulous that a plan isn’t already in place to make Brown’s health history data available to local scientists doing biomedical genetic research.
Gov. Donald L. Carcieri formed the advisory group three years ago to promote collaboration across Rhode Island’s research institutions, attract federal funding for research in the state and drive related economic development opportunities.
STAC’s work has become more important to economic development officials in recent months, as Rhode Island’s economy has floundered and the state faces its worst budget crisis in almost two decades.
“You can see the sense of urgency about what we’re doing in the kind of economic reports that are coming out,” Carcieri said, speaking at the STAC meeting. “We have not yet diversified fast enough, we haven’t gotten our economy straightened enough.”
Later this month, the Research Alliance plans to debut a new Web portal and portfolio of online tools that will contain the state’s first comprehensive cataloguing of shared equipment and facilities and a “one-stop” view of activity happening across the state’s research community.
Jeffrey Seemann, the dean of URI’s College of Environmental and Life Sciences and STAC’s other co-chairman, said the Research Alliance also will take a more active role in supporting the EPSCoR/IDeA programs that are awarded to Rhode Island. The U.S. National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) IDeA programs have brought about $90 million in funding to Rhode Island, while the U.S. National Science Foundation’s EPSCoR program has brought $6.75 million. Rhode Island researchers also will receive a U.S. Department of Defense DEPSCoR award, Seemann said.
In addition to moving forward with an engagement plan and new activities, the Research Alliance will continue to focus on its Collaborative Research Award program, which last year granted nearly $1.5 million to 32 scientists at 15 research institutions in Rhode Island. &#8226