May 12, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Jessica Mega, a prominent cardiologist at Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, has left to head up the Baseline Study of Google X, the technology company’s life sciences division, the company confirmed this morning.
The Baseline Study program is part of the precision medicine initiative to “understand what it means to be healthy, down to the molecular and cellular level,” Google said in a statement. Andrew Conrad, head of Google X, said the mission of the life sciences division is “to change healthcare from reactive to proactive. Ultimately it’s to prevent disease and extend the average lifespan through the prevention of disease, make people live longer, healthier lives.”
Mega has experience working in clinical trial programs, including a study of the anti-coagulant Xarelto. Forbes noted that Mega was also the lead investigator of the ELEVATE-TIMI 56 trial, which studied escalating doses of clopidogrel based on CYP2C19 genotype. That study found “tripling the maintenance dose of clopidogrel in most but not all patients with a common genetic variation will lower platelet reactivity to levels achieved in patients without the variation.”
Google’s Baseline Study is collecting genetic and molecular information on 175 people for its first trial. That information will be entered into a large data base and researched through various algorithms and other data sets to probe un-researched connections between genetics and various diseases in hopes of identifying those biomarkers that can be the target of potential medications that are more precise in treating ailments. The Baseline Study is collecting data to determine what a “normal human” looks like at its core in order to establish a baseline. Data is being collected in multiple ways, including genome sequencing, researching family history and collecting bodily fluids such as urine and blood. That research will allow drugmakers to provide targeted therapies for individual care – a key portion of precision medicine, an initiative supported by the White House.
“Precision medicine gives clinicians tools to better understand the complex mechanisms underlying a patient’s health, disease, or condition, and to better predict which treatments will be most effective,” President Barack Obama’s administration said in a statement. “Patients with breast, lung, and colorectal cancers, as well as melanomas and leukemias, for instance, routinely undergo molecular testing as part of patient care, enabling physicians to select treatments that improve chances of survival and reduce exposure to adverse effects.”
One such drug at the heart of the precision medicine movement is Vertex Pharmaceuticals ’s Kalydeco, the first drug designed to counter the genetic cause of cystic fibrosis.
When Google’s first small-scale study is complete, the life sciences division will team with researchers from Stanford University and Duke University to design and conduct a larger study consisting of thousands of volunteers, Forbes said. The results of the research will then be made available to researchers from pharmaceutical companies and other entities for their own uses, Google said.
Google’s life science’s division is already at work with drug companies. In January Google and multiple sclerosis drug maker Biogen Idec, Inc. teamed up to research and address environmental and genetic factors that can cause the debilitating disease multiple sclerosis. The company created Google Genomics, a system that allows hospitals, research facilities and universities to store and share genomic data.
