Madrid, 18 December (EFE) .- Consorcio Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red (CIBER) and Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) are the centers selected to lead the implementation of the new Precision Medicine infrastructure associated with science and technology (IMPaCT).
The call associated with this initiative has a direct aid of 25.8 million euros, which will be managed by CIBER and BSC-CNS, the Ministry of Science and Innovation said in a statement on Friday.
Framed in the Strategic Health Action 2017-2020 of the Carlos III Institute of Health (ISCIII), the call is another step towards the implementation of precision medicine in the national health system which, through a strategy based on science and innovation, will have 77, 3 million euros for its development in 2020 and 2021.
The programs included in IMPaCT are aligned with three areas that will be developed in the future national strategy: Predictive Medicine, Genomic Medicine and Data Science.
CIBER will be in charge of managing the first two, for which it will have funding of 14 million and 7.24 million, respectively, while BSC-CNS will address the third, with funding of 4.55 million. .
Professionals from over one hundred Spanish scientific and health institutions will participate in each of the three programs, led by a person who will act as coordinator and responsible for the action plan.
The Predictive Medicine program will be coordinated by Marina Pollán from CIBER of Epidemiology and Public Health (CIBERESP); Genomic Medicine, by Ángel Carracedo from CIBER for Rare Diseases (CIBERER) and Data Science, by Alfonso Valencia from BSC-CNS.
The Predictive Medicine program will have the participation of another 21 institutions, including hospitals and research centers from all over Spain; Genomic medicine will have a network of five reference centers for genomic analysis and a group of clinical experts, and data science will involve 47 institutions along with companies, foundations, universities and research centers.
The Predictive Medicine program will launch a population cohort of residents in Spain that will generate a dynamic registry of clinical, epidemiological and lifestyle data of the population that will help make health decisions, build predictive models of the disease, identify health inequalities. , monitors indicators and assesses the impact of health policies.
“The IMPaCT cohort will include, in its final development, 200,000 people representing the entire population living in Spain. Due to its large size and wide geographical coverage, it will make it possible to represent the ethnic variability and geographical and environmental diversity of the whole country.” Marina Pollán explains.
The Genomic Medicine program will develop infrastructures and coordination protocols to perform genomic analyzes and other “homicide” data throughout the country, taking as a support the next generation sequencing technologies and existing experiences for their application to the diagnosis of human diseases.
The goal is to put experimental “omic” diagnostic technologies at the service of all those who, after a diagnostic effort with maximum assistance technology, do not have a certain diagnosis, which is a basic step to put science at a high level in the service of the people and the national health system.
“This initiative is of key importance to the NHS, because genomic medicine is a revolution in health. It allows diagnoses, identification of the best treatments and design of prevention strategies “, says Ángel Carracedo.
Finally, the data science program aims to support the development of a common, interoperable and integrated system for collecting and analyzing clinical and molecular data, contributing to the knowledge and resources available in the Spanish scientific and technological system that will allow the answer to research based questions. on the different clinical and molecular information systems available.
In essence, this program aims to provide researchers with a population perspective based on individual data.
“With the data science program we want to start the construction of infrastructure and systems in order to integrate the dispersed genomic and medical data so far, offering technical solutions to the many problems of heterogeneity, dispersion and access; is an infrastructure that must be aligned with European Initiatives and lays the foundations for the development of research projects in precision medicine “, concludes Alfonso Valencia. EFE