Colorado center will offer treatments targeted by patient DNA

Four Colorado healthcare organizations planning a $63 million Center for Personalized Medicine aim to use patients' DNA to predict their risk of disease and develop targeted treatments based on the genetic information.

University of Colorado Health, a four-hospital system based in Aurora, will contribute $26 million over the next five years toward the project. Its partners include its Anschutz Medical Campus neighbors: the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Children's Hospital Colorado and the University Physicians medical group.

While the center will be based on the Anschutz campus, the center's computers will be connected to UC Health's electronic health-record system allowing genetic testing, treatment and counseling services to be available throughout the state.

The partners will establish a DNA bank over the next one to two years and will connect the center's computer system to their respective EHR systems. They also plan to expand the capacity of an existing laboratory to examine more samples and more types of cancer samples and hire staff to provide the services.

“I'm confident this will revolutionize medicine, research and education as we know it,” Dr. Richard Krugman, dean of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said in a news release. “It's almost impossible to quantify the amount of knowledge to be gained by examining our genome—the blueprints that make us who we are.”

Follow Andis Robeznieks on Twitter: @MHARobeznieks