New genetic research center opens at FGCU institute
A non-profit genetic research center officially opened Monday at Florida Gulf Coast University's newly completed Emergent Technologies Institute off Alico Road.
The Clinical & Transitional Genome Research Institute will work with the region's doctors and health care providers to study how to better prescribe commonly used drugs, based on patients' individual genetic makeups.
Researchers have announced partnerships with Lee Memorial Health System cardiac and pediatric physicians, and the Collier County-based Healthcare Network of Southwest Florida, which provides treatment to that area's under-insured.
"What we're learning in health care is that one-size-fits-all treatments simply don't work as well as we'd like them to," said Dr. Lawrence Antonucci, Lee Memorial's chief operating officer, during the institute's ribbon-cutting Monday morning. "Now we know that everyone metabolizes drugs differently, reacts to disease differently. And the goal of genomics is to take that information and apply targeted therapy."
Its first projects will include studying gene-drug interactions among young people with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, more effective pain management for pediatric patients and better drug dosing for post-operative cardiac patients.
The institute is also discussing how it might take part in other national studies, including those related to Alzheimer's disease and other types of age-related mental decline.
NIcholas Jacobs, the new institute's president and founder of the Department of Defense's Clinical Breast Care Project, said genetic research has developed rapidly in recent decades but has not quickly filtered down to most of the nation's health centers.
"There's an opportunity, to not only utilize the science in a way that would be incredibly meaningful to the people of the area, but also to create a medical tourism mecca, where we would be training physicians, laboratory technologies, pharmacists," Jacobs said.
The $12.5 million Emergent Technologies Institute opened in January. The newly announced genetic research institute leases space in it.
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