Asher Chanan Khan, an oncologist with the Mayo Clinic Florida, calls individualized medicine the future of medicine.

Amelia Island residents Cecilia and Dan Carmichael are making a down payment on that future with a $5 million donation to help establish a Center of Individualized Medicine at the Mayo Clinics Jacksonville campus.

The Carmichaels gift will help Mayo move from talking about the promise of genomic medicine to making it a reality for patients, said Alexander Parker, who is now the Cecilia and Dan Carmichael Family Associate Director of the Mayo Clinics Center for Individualized Medicine in Florida.

Individualized medicine uses genetic testing to establish a patients genome sequencing.

Such individualized approaches are not uncommon, said Chanan Khan, assistant director of the Center of Individualized Medicine.

But in most cases, the genetic testing doesnt answer the most important question, he said.

The report tells you whether your gene is bad or good, he said. It doesnt tell you what to do.

What will be different at Mayo is that a team of 14 to 16 people from a variety of fields will sit together and give a patients genetic results the most sophisticated and most detailed analysis.

Chanan Khan said that team will put together a report that tells the patient and the patients treating physician: This is what you have and we think this will work for you.

The Carmichaels interest in individualized medicine dates to 2008 when they retired to Amelia Island (Dan Carmichael, a retired insurance executive, had grown up in Jacksonville).

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$5 million gift helps Mayo Clinic establish a Center of Individualized Medicine in Jacksonville

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