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In This Issue:
National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week April 20-26
When the Shapiro Cardiovascular Center opens, Pathology at BWH will be second to none in using information from patients’ genes to better diagnose disease and give care providers the information they need to prescribe the best treatment.
The opening of the center enables BWH’s Cytogenetics and Molecular Diagnostics laboratories to come together as one entity—called the Center for Advanced Molecular Diagnostics—in an expanded space on the fifth floor of Shapiro.
“The growing momentum of genomics and its application in molecular diagnostics has enormous promise for personalized medicine that is already being realized,” said Janina Longtine, MD, chief of Molecular Diagnostics, who will lead the new center with Cynthia Morton, PhD, director of Cytogenetics.
“We will enhance our efforts at BWH to provide cutting edge care based on direct integration of cutting edge research,” Morton said.
The new center will join together the molecular and genetic testing currently performed in the Molecular Diagnostics and Cytogenetics laboratories and work closely with all other components of the Pathology Department to provide the most precise diagnosis and prognostic information to guide treatment for each patient.
“We’ll be able to better integrate how we process every specimen that comes in,” Longtine said, noting that the field of molecular diagnostics has taken off within the past decade, and, within the last five years, has had a great impact on patient care.
For example, molecular diagnosticians can perform a test sensitive enough to detect the one BCR-ABL-carrying leukemia cell in a million blood cells that indicates the patient still has a tumor, even before it’s clinically apparent and symptoms reappear. “This lets us know to try another drug or treatment regimen before the patient begins exhibiting symptoms of the disease again,” Longtine said.
The new space at the Shapiro Center will optimize workflow and efficiency. It also will enable interactions with the cardiovascular medicine teams around diagnostics and new molecular test development.
“We have some of the world’s leading experts in cardiology, genetics and pathology,” said Michael Gimbrone, MD, chair of Pathology. “And in the face of all the information we have gleaned from mapping and sequencing the human genome, we’re extraordinarily well positioned to realize the vision of personalized medicine. That will have a tremendous impact on patients and their quality of life.”