The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has selected the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston to lead one of three “genome centers” for its All of Us Research Program. The Johns Hopkins-Baylor team will receive inaugural funding of $7.9 million to begin collecting and analyzing clinical-grade genomic data from volunteers to understand how biological, environmental and lifestyle factors impact human health.
“Creating this enormous data set from diverse populations will build a path to more precise and individualized medicine,” says Kimberly Doheny, Ph.D., co-director of Johns Hopkins Genomics and a principal investigator of the All of Us Research Program.
The All of Us Research Program is an ongoing genomic-focused NIH project aiming to collect and analyze health and lifestyle data from 1 million or more volunteers nationwide, including people with diverse gender, ethnic, and geographic backgrounds. Historically, biological samples from white European males have been overrepresented in biomedical research. A distinguishing feature of the All of Us Program is its commitment to address sample bias in order to make precision medicine accessible to all.
Baylor and Johns Hopkins have worked together for nearly a decade to identify new genes responsible for rare Mendelian diseases as part of their federally funded Center for Mendelian Genomics.
