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Population genomics

Genomic data informs personalized care and improves health

Precision medicine, also known as personalized medicine, is an individualized approach to disease prevention and treatment. It considers differences in people’s genes, environments and lifestyles for health care. Understanding the interactions between genetics, behavior and environment can improve the health and well-being of communities. Our research in population genomics provides data to study risk factors for certain diseases, figure out which treatments work best for people of different backgrounds, connect people with the right clinical studies for their needs and learn how technology can lead to better health.

Our work includes the federally funded Connect for Cancer Prevention Cohort Study. We are also leading the research oversight and supporting patient enrollment for the myGenetics research program supported by HealthPartners in collaboration with Helix OpCo, LLC.

Investigators

Key projects

All of Us

All of Us is a large, multi-center initiative to enroll one million or more participants across the United States to build one of the most diverse health databases in history. This program will help accelerate research and improve health by considering individual differences in lifestyle, socioeconomics, environment and biology.

Connect for Cancer Prevention Cohort Study

This is a large, multi-center study to understand the causes of cancer and how to prevent it. We are looking at genomic, environmental and behavioral factors associated with the new cancer diagnoses and other relevant outcomes. The study aims to enroll at least 200,000 participants aged 40-65 years who do not have a history of invasive cancer. HealthPartners is recruiting patients for this study and participating in additional research to improve approaches to subject recruitment.

myGenetics / Helix Research Network

This study is designed to accelerate the integration of genomic and other omics data into clinical care, and to support the advancement of biomedical research through genomics research via the Helix Research Network. We provide research oversight and support patient enrollment for myGenetics, which offers free genetic screening and initial clinical consultation for three Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Tier 1 conditions (familial hypercholesterolemia, hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, and Lynch Syndrome) for all HealthPartners patients ages 18 and older.

  • Helix Research Network (HRN) Host Genomics and Viral Sequencing substudy
    We collect data and samples to contribute to the HRN database and the database of participating HRN member sites. This will support viral sequencing and host genomics analyses in the future.

 Key publications

Learn more about our Population Genomics investigators and their publications by visiting Knowledge Exchange.