The National Institutes of Health wants to dismantle cookie-cutter health care. But the organization needs a lot of people to help it figure out how.
Researchers from the NIH’s “All of Us” project are looking for 1 million people to take part in a large study aimed at discovering customizable solutions in the treatment and prevention of disease, reports the Associated Press. This is what’s known as precision medicine, something typically used in the treatment of cancer.
Specifically, the ” All of Us” project wants to find why people respond differently to certain drugs, home in on biological markers that make people more or less susceptible to common diseases and introduce a targeted therapy trial program, among other initiatives, according to its website.
What diseases could this impact? Think heart disease, diabetes and kinds of cancer.
“The DNA is almost the easiest part,” Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told the Associated Press. “It’s challenging to figure out how to put all that together to allow somebody to have a more precise sense of future risk of illness and what they might do about it.”
Disease research usually involves several hundred or a few thousand people, the Associated Press notes, so the sheer scale of this project speaks to its lofty ambitions. Researchers want to include a diverse group of participants, especially minorities who traditionally haven’t received enough representation when it comes to scientific research.
The program has already begun pilot testing, enrolling and taking blood samples from 2,500 people. Next spring — pending the results of the pilot — the NIH will then let almost any U.S. adult who wants to join sign up. The idea is for the study to last 10 years at a minimum.
Those interested in the program can sign up on its website for email updates.
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This NIH Program Wants to Change the Face of Health Care originally appeared on usnews.com
