Originally published on Cornerstone, the CHOP Research Blog.

I composed this original article based on an interview with the investigator.

Excerpt:

Today at the White House, President Obama welcomed guests, including Adam Resnick, PhD, representing The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, for a morning of remarks and discussions about what the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) has achieved to date, and how it can take the next steps into the new era of medicine that delivers the right treatment at the right time to the right person. One way CHOP will be an integral part of that effort is through its commitment to data-driven discovery in pediatrics.

The PMI, which President Obama first announced in his 2015 State of the Union speech, launched last year with a White House event attended by CHOP leukemia patient Emily Whitehead and by the hospital’s then-CEO, Steven Altschuler, MD. The pair was invited in recognition of the progress at CHOP and the University of Pennsylvania in developing an investigational precision-medicine T-cell therapy for cancer patients like Emily.

But that type of discovery is only one part of the precision medicine equation, according to Dr. Resnick, co-director and co-founder of CHOP’s new Center for Data-Driven Discovery in Biomedicine (D³B).

“Even to make a new T-cell therapy, you have to begin with data about what to target,” Dr. Resnick said. “The other side of the coin in harnessing the potential of precision medicine is empowering the pediatric community to share and use data transparently and collaboratively through initiatives that connect patients, clinicians, and researchers to that data.”