It cost over $3 billion and took almost 13 years to sequence the human genome for the first time, a task that was only completed a little over ten years ago.

Instead of our current one-size-fits all treatment for most diseases, many envision a future in which we will be able to tailor medical treatment based on ones underlying genetic information, a medical model known as personalized, or precision, medicine.

To better understand what it will take to reach these aims, which will require further advances in many disciplines and have implications stretching far beyond the field of medicine, University President Lee Bollinger recently announced the creation of a task force on personalized medicine.

When there are major advances in our knowledge that can be translated in very important effects for the world, we want to make sure as the university we are doing everything we can to facilitate that, Bollinger said at last weeks University Senate plenary.

The task force, co-chaired by Provost John Coatsworth and Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine Lee Goldman, brings together almost 40 faculty members across the entire university. Unlike other institutions, including various cancer centers, that are also working in personalized medicine, this task force will use a University-wide approach, rather than just a medical one.

The opportunity is really here now

They have the foresight to realize that this is not just a medical center problem, that this really permeates every different aspect of what we do at Columbia, said Dr. Wendy Chung, director of the Clinical Genetics Program at the Columbia University Medical Center and member of the task force. Its going to be challenging, I think, to get people who speak different languages to come together and to realize what they can contribute but Ive never seen any other initiative where so many people have come together to try and make it work.

Though the task force has yet to meet, it plans to produce a report next fall that outlines what Columbia should do in this emerging field of medicine.

Its almost certainly one of those things that you cant just leave to chance to happen. You have to get organized, you have to get the infrastructure, you have to figure out the kinds of intellectual work that you need to do, Bollinger said.

Personalized medicine will ultimately be the result of a more comprehensive understanding of the genetic underpinnings of disease, but to get to that point, researchers need more data than is currently available.

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New task force on personalized medicine takes interdisciplinary approach

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