HMS to Investigate Origins of Disease

Brigham and Women’s Hospital—a major teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School—announced yesterday a partnership in research that will investigate the genetic origin of serious diseases in women.

The hospital will team up with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), a branch of the National Institute of Health (NIH), and Amgen, a Fortune 500 human therapeutics company, on the Women’s Genome Health Study.

Over the past decade, 28,000 initially healthy American women have been monitored. Genetic samples from each of the women will undergo a comprehensive genome-wide scan looking for 317,000 potential genetic differences between the women who remain healthy and those who have suffered from a serious illness like a heart attack, breast cancer, or diabetes.

Dr. Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of the NBHLI, said that eventually the genomic database will be made available for scientists worldwide, allowing for new discoveries in drug development and personalized disease treatment and prevention.

“The hope is to get the right drug to the right patient at the right time,” said

Braunwald Professor of Medicine Paul M. Ridker. “That is really the holy grail of pharmagenetics.”

Ridker, who is the principal investigator of the Women’s Genome Health Study and director of the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention at Brigham and Women’s, also called the study the “first step into looking into that future.”

According to Nabel, the Women’s Genome Health Study is one of the first academic-pharmaceutical-government partnerships in the area of personalized medicine. She called the partnership a “win-win-win” for all three parties.

A spokesperson from Amgen could not be reached for comment.