NIH awards $55 million to support Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program

Issue: August 2016

The NIH announced $55 million in awards for fiscal year 2016 to launch a key component of President Barack Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative.

The Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program is a longitudinal research program that aims to include more than 1 million U.S. participants. The goal is to generate information about the prevention and treatment of cancer and other diseases based on individual lifestyle, environmental and genetic differences.

Francis S. Collins

“This range of information at the scale of 1 million people from all walks of life will be an unprecedented resource for researchers working to understand all of the factors that influence health and disease,” Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, director of the NIH, said in a press release. “Over time, data provided by participants will help us answer important health questions, such as why some people with elevated genetic and environmental risk factors for disease still manage to maintain good health, and how people suffering from a chronic illness can maintain the highest possible quality of life.

“The more we understand about individual differences, the better able we will be to effectively prevent and treat illness,” Collins added.

Participants enrolled in the study will be asked to provide information about their health history and status, as well as share genomic and biological information through blood and urine tests. Researchers will have access to participants’ electronic health records, and participants also can submit environmental exposure and lifestyle data in real time via a mobile app.

“This is an incredibly complex study requiring new kinds of strategic and operational partnerships — this can't be business as usual,” Kathy L. Hudson, PhD, NIH deputy director for science, outreach and policy who helped orchestrate the Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program, said in the release. “We are excited to break new ground in engaging people in research and building a study of this scale and scope.”

NIH granted the $55 million in awards to establish partnerships and build the infrastructure necessary to support the study’s efforts. These awards are intended to develop and maintain the following components of the Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program:

Data and Research Support Center — granted to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, in partnership with the Broad Institute and Verily Life Sciences. The center is intended to acquire, organize and provide secure access to large datasets for precision medicine research. The center also will provide tools for data analysis.
Participant Technologies Center — granted to Scripps Research Institute and Vibrent Health to support direct enrollment onto the study. The center is tasked with developing, testing and maintaining the study’s mobile apps, which can be used to enroll participants and receive their consent and additional data.
Health Care Provider Organizations — granted to Columbia University Health Sciences, Northwestern University, University of Arizona and University of Pittsburgh to enroll interested participants in the study, help build research protocols and plans, and collect health data and biospecimens. Additional regional and national medical centers, community health centers and U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs medical centers will be added to this network to ensure geographic, ethnic, racial and socioeconomic diversity in the study.

The NIH also collaborated with the Health Resources & Services Administration to select the following six Federally Qualified Health Centers as recipient Health Care Provider Organizations: Cherokee Health Systems in Knoxville, Tennessee; Community Health Center Inc. in Middletown, Connecticut; Eau Claire Cooperative Health Center in Columbia, South Carolina; HRHCare in Peekskill, New York; Jackson-Hinds Comprehensive Health Center in Jackson, Mississippi; and San Ysidro Health Center in San Ysidro, California.

Biobank — granted to Mayo Clinic to support the collection, analysis, storage and distribution of biospecimens for research use.

All of the awards are for 5 years. Enrollment onto the Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program is expected to begin this year, with the aim of meeting enrollment goals by 2020.