Following several years enrolling disease-specific and otherwise healthy cohorts into the Coriell Personalized Medicine Collaborative (CPMC), a prospective study aimed at evaluating the clinical utility of personal genomic information for common complex disease and pharmacogenomics, the CPMC expanded to create a military cohort, specifically, with the United States Air Force.
In 2010 the Air Force Medical Service (AFMS) Patient-Centered Precision Care (PC2-Z) Program was established as an Air Force Surgeon General Directive and launched by the AFMS Innovations to gather clinical knowledge and provide recommendations for translating genome-informed medicine into precision healthcare for all Air Force healthcare beneficiaries. Recognizing its established infrastructure, the CPMC was chosen as the centerpiece of the PC2-Z Program as a clinical utility study (CUS).
Now in its sixth year, the Coriell-Air Force research partnership has produced a wide variety of insights, including optimal study design for military-sponsored genomic research. In a paper just published in the Nature Partner Journal, Genomic Medicine, Coriell and Air Force authors discuss the challenges faced and critical success factors for military-civilian collaborations centered on genomics.
Coriell President and CEO and CPMC principal investigator, Dr. Michael Christman, adds, "The CPMC-Air Force project has been hugely rewarding for all involved, including the Air Force participants whose involvement drive this research forward. We believe that over the longer term the CUS study will contribute to the development of policies and processes relevant to genomic data sharing and clinical application within the US military."
The paper titled, "Precision Military Medicine: Conducting a multi-site clinical utility study of genomic and lifestyle risk factors in the United States Air Force," can be accessed here.
