Episode 48: Celebrating 20 Years of Precision Medicine

TGen Talks

This year marks the 20th anniversary of TGen's founding on what at the time was a relatively unknown idea outside the circles of academia and scientific research, precision medicine. The concept of using a person's own genome to diagnose and treat disease at an individual level, to move beyond the one-size-fits-all treatment plans that had dominated the medical landscape for decades, where drugs and therapies considered large groups of people with the same disease, and what worked for the majority. A true public-private partnership, TGen came to fruition through the work of tribal leaders, CEOs, philanthropic trusts, foundations, individuals and university presidents, all united toward an extraordinarily high-risk goal: Forming and funding an institute based on the just-completed Human Genome Project and placing it not in Boston, San Francisco or Washington, D.C., but in Phenix, Arizona. TGen founder, Dr. Jeffrey Trent, joins TGen Talks to discuss the institute’s beginnings as well as how over the past 20 years, TGen faculty have leveraged the human blueprint to advance the diagnosis and treatment of various cancers, neurologic and metabolic diseases such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and rare disorders.