Jim Doyle announced Friday that Wisconsin’s four academic research institutions will join forces on an initiative focused on making the state a leader in individualized medicine, a science that would treat patients based on their own DNA.

The Wisconsin Medical Research Triangle will include scientists at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, UW-Milwaukee, the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Marshfield Clinic, the governor informed.

“The benefits of the personalized health care research that will be conducted within that new triangle will reach far beyond Wisconsin’s borders,” Jim Leonhart, executive director of the Wisconsin Biotechnology & Medical Device Association said in a statement.  

Researchers at the four institutions are looking forward to combining knowledge of people’s complete DNA with their health history in order to better trace the individuals most exposed to the risk of developing a disease. Following the identification, researchers will proceed to discovering the best methods to treat these patients, also as part of the Wisconsin Genomics Initiative.

The basis for the initiative will be Marshfield’s special database which comprises DNA donations from more than 20,000 individuals who have been examined by Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation in about 29 years of follow-up, said Humberto Vidaillet, MD, Director of Medical Research for the Marshfield Clinic system and main investigator of the Wisconsin Genomics Initiative.

 As stated by Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council, the collaboration is “unique” and “pulls together resources across Wisconsin that is hard to duplicate anywhere else in the nation.”