Wisconsin Genomic Initiative

Governor Doyle's announcement

Governor Doyle's news release (PDF 44 Kb)
Watch Governor Doyle's press conference at Marshfield Clinic

Wisconsin Genomics Initiative overview

The Wisconsin Genomics Initiative (WGI) will advance personalized health care research. Scientists will be able to predict an individual's risk of developing a disease, precisely target a personalized treatment and ultimately prevent disease before it occurs.

• Researchers will build and test scientific methods to predict the risk of specific diseases based on an individual’s genetic make up, medical history and conditions, and environmental factors.
• A person’s genetic makeup includes inherited factors that affect disease and response to treatment.
• Clinical attributes include a person’s health history -- such as age, family history, cholesterol levels and high blood pressure.
• Environmental factors include diet, smoking, exercise and obesity.
• In analyzing all these factors, scientists will be able to predict the risk of developing disease, such as heart disease or diabetes, and how a patient will respond to medications and other treatments.
• Results are expected within two years

Wisconsin is currently a leader in genomic and personalized health care. The Wisconsin Genomics Initiative will solidify the state’s national and international leadership position.

The Wisconsin Genomics Initiative is a historic collaboration among Wisconsin’s three academic medical centers and the state’s major urban university.

• The Wisconsin Genomics Initiative brings together the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (UWSMPH), the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) and Marshfield Clinic to meet important scientific and public health needs
• Never before have these four institutions worked together on a project of this significance, scope and scale.
• Each of the four partners is a leader in one or more areas needed for a successful effort.
• Marshfield Clinic is home to the largest bio bank in the nation. The Clinic has DNA samples for 20,000 people in a Personalized Medicine Research Project with a fully integrated electronic medical record and more than 20 years of medical history. Additionally, the Clinic is a leader in biomedical informatics research.
• UWSMPH is a global leader in stem cell biology and regenerative medicine. It is uniquely capable of comprehensive biostatistical analysis of the vast data that will result from the Initiative's genotyping analysis. Additionally, UW-Madison's Institute for Clinical and Translational Research creates an environment to transform research into real-life medical practice.
• MCW is one of the top human genetic research centers in the country, capable of cost-effectively genotyping individual DNA samples. This expertise when combined with the strong basic research and clinical translational sciences fosters new medical discoveries.
• UWM conducts on going research in urban health care and health informatics. Additionally, its school of nursing is active in research and community health engagement.
• Together, these institutions will tackle an important scientific and public health need that otherwise could not be met, and cannot be accomplished anywhere else but Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin Genomics Initiative will create key knowledge required to make individualized health care a reality.

• Wisconsin will become the centerpiece of an international trend to transform health care delivery using the human genome.
• This project has the potential to:
• Reduce health care costs through more effective therapies
• Advance predictive medicine and public health
• Determine the optimal way to deliver personalized health care in urban and rural populations and to underserved communities
• Scientists and clinicians from around the world will work with the scientists in Wisconsin to further increase the value of WGI and help Wisconsin be the first state to deploy this new medicine.

Wisconsin has an unparalleled opportunity to develop more biotech and health care delivery tools into our economy.

• The Wisconsin Genomics Initiative’s research goals -- the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of human disease in an individualized manner – are also the highest grant priorities of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH, other government agencies and national foundations will be looking to support these kinds of initiatives. As a result, support for WGI will be leveraged into potentially new NIH, government and national research dollars.
• In addition, discoveries growing out of this initiative will spawn “spin-off” companies, which will create new high tech jobs and attract entrepreneurial support to the state
• This program will also lead to additional research on science-based prevention of disease, an approach that will draw new pharmaceutical industry to the state. Pharmaceutical companies are anxious to pursue new therapies that prevent disease in at-risk individuals, rather than only focusing on the treatment of existent disease. As WGI identifies new targets for disease prevention, Wisconsin will become an irresistibly attractive site for the pharmaceutical industry expansion.

Research will be conducted in two phases. During Phase I, researchers will build a scientific model that will predict susceptibility to certain diseases and response to treatments. In Phase II, the model will be applied to a wider variety of people and different diseases.

• Phase I
• Focus on four diseases – diabetes, myocardial infarction, obesity and atrial fibrillation
• Identify 1 million medically relevant genetic markers for the 20,000 participants in Marshfield Clinic’s Personalized Medicine Project
• Use Marshfield Clinic’s electronic medical health record to obtain health history and environmental factors for the targeted diseases
• Build and test scientific methodologies capable of predicting an individual’s disease susceptibility and treatment response
• Phase II
• Apply the findings to different diseases with more expansive genetic information
• Expand the participants to include urban residents and children – providing for ethnic, age, and socio-economic diversity
• Genotype the additional participants

Contact Teresa Derfus, Marshfield Clinic Media Relations Manager, at 715-387-9362 or email derfust@marshfieldclinic.org for more information.