Program in Pediatric Molecular & Personalized Medicine
The Program in Pediatric Molecular and Personalized Medicine facilitates collaborative research interaction and institution-wide scientific advancement.
Molecular Medicine is the attempt to understand human disease in terms of its most basic molecular, cellular or genetic features. Personalized Medicine involves defining separate pathophysiological components, which may be present or absent within individuals sharing the same diagnosis, each with their distinct molecular etiologies. The goal of both of these concepts is to facilitate the development of more effective therapeutic interventions, and to improve health care efficiency by reducing unnecessary treatments.
The Program in Pediatric Molecular and Personalized Medicine sustains, strengthens and expands upon existing collaborative projects. We also recognize a need for more expertise and practical experience in this emerging area, therefore education and training of junior professionals is a major focus for the program. The ultimate goals of the program are to improve health care by promoting state-of-the-art translational research, to drive scientific growth by facilitating improvements in the quality of scientific investigation (e.g., providing access to available populations and state-of-the-art technologies), and thereby enhance future competitiveness for external funding so that we may continue to make improvements in healthcare. Our commitment is demonstrated, in part, by our support of and participation in the following research.
Over the past few years, faculty from the Department of Pediatrics have begun numerous state-of-the-art translational studies, with a particular emphasis on respiratory disease. These studies are currently enrolling pediatric subjects and collecting extensive clinical, and in many cases, cellular, molecular, genomic, genetic and microbiomic data. Through these projects we have established a network of collaborations, and infrastructure, both locally and nationally. This includes the active training of personnel, and development of methods, specifically to integrate large clinical, molecular and cellular data sets with the goal of identifying biomarkers and mechanisms associated with disease variability among individuals within populations.
Thomas J. Mariani, Ph.D.