San Diego Blood Bank and the National Blood Collaborative Receive Sub-award to Support the U.S. Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 4, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As part of the most ambitious medical research program in the history of American medicine, the San Diego Blood Bank (SDBB) and the National Blood Collaborative (NBC) have received a sub-award for their role in enrolling participant-volunteers into the national Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) Cohort Program.

The five-year award is part of President Obama's Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) Cohort Program, a landmark longitudinal research effort that aims to engage one million or more U.S. participants to improve the ability to prevent and treat disease based on individual differences in lifestyle, environment and genetics. The sub-award is from the award that will support a Participant Technologies Center through the Scripps Translational Science Institute (STSI), which will play a key role in enrolling participants in the study, as well as providing mobile applications.  

"We are excited to be working with great partners like the SDBB and NBC to help make the PMI Cohort Program the truly transformational program it has the potential of being," said Dr. Steve Steinhubl Director of Digital Medicine at STSI. "The PMI Cohort Program is writing the book on the future of medical research and healthcare, and to be successful it will take a lot of creative and inspired people working together towards the common goal of substantially improving the health and wellness of all people."

The initiative includes an extensive network of high-profile partners including WebMD, CSC, Qualcomm, Walgreens, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Leidos/QTC, Vibrent Health, Sage Bionetworks and PatientsLikeMe. Working collaboratively with SDBB, NBC and others, the Participant Technologies Center will be responsible for enrollment of at least 350,000 participant-volunteers.

"These partners provide unparalleled outreach and engagement, along with data privacy and security capabilities," said Dr. Eric Topol, Director of STSI and Professor of Genomics at The Scripps Research Institute. The team aims to begin initial enrollment into the study later this year, with the aim of meeting its enrollment goal by 2020.

SDBB and NBC will enroll over 140,000 participant-volunteers. "Blood donors in San Diego, and nationally, engage so selflessly and altruistically in saving lives. They are blazing new ground when it comes to answering the question – how can we have even greater impact on our community's health?" said Dr. David Wellis, CEO of the San Diego Blood Bank. "The results generated from this effort will not only impact our donors and their families, they will ultimately impact the healthcare community nationwide."

Participants will be invited to answer questions about their health history and status through a simple blood and urine donation, and grant access to their clinical data from electronic health records. In addition, mobile health devices and apps will provide lifestyle data and environmental exposures in real time. All of this will be accomplished with essential privacy and security safeguards. As partners in the research, participants will have ongoing input into study design and implementation, as well as access to a wide range of their individual and aggregated study results.

The knowledge gained from the PMI Cohort Program will extend successes of precision medicine in some cancers to many other diseases. Importantly, the program will focus not just on disease, but also on ways to increase an individual's chances of remaining healthy throughout life.

For more information on the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI), see https://www.whitehouse.gov/precision-medicine. For more information on the PMI Cohort Program, see https://www.nih.gov/precision-medicine-initiative-cohort-program. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

ABOUT THE SAN DIEGO BLOOD BANK 
The San Diego Blood Bank (SDBB) is dedicated to community health by providing a reliable supply of blood to patients in need. Our vision is to further ensure the health of our community by simultaneously delivering related health and wellness education and services and extending into research. Founded in 1950 with the support of the San Diego County Medical Society, SDBB is an independent, 501(c)(3) non-profit that serves hospitals in San Diego, Orange, Imperial and Los Angeles counties with blood transfusion products and reference laboratory services. SDBB currently operates six local donor centers and 10 bloodmobiles. SDBB's Cell Therapy Program provides lifesaving stem cell transplants to patients worldwide. For more information about SDBB visit www.sandiegobloodbank.org or connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

ABOUT THE NATIONAL BLOOD COLLABORATIVE 
National Blood Collaborative (NBC) is a national network of leading blood centers that came together in 2012 to create a new U.S. blood services organization. Working in partnership, NBC has the capacity to respond to the increasing economic demands of hospitals and healthcare systems—efficiently and cost effectively – by collecting, processing and distributing more than one million blood components every year. NBC serves hospital customers in 35 states (and licensure for more), and is a worldwide provider of biological products to life sciences and pharmaceutical companies. We specialize in all human blood derived products, platelet lysate, cord blood and specialized donor draws requiring IRB approved collections on a national scale. For more information about NBC, visit www.nationalbloodcollaborative.org.

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SOURCE San Diego Blood Bank

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