Partners will set up a series of assays to understand disease pathology and find biomarkers.
The Burnham Institute for Medical Research and the Sarah W. Stedman Nutrition and Metabolism Center have come together to advance personalized medicine through metabolomic profiling. The aim is to clarify the basic mechanisms of disease and identify biomarkers for diagnosis and drug action.
The agreement will establish an extension of the Stedman Center laboratory at Burnham’s Lake Nona campus in Orlando. The scientists will work together to establish a series of assays for specific metabolites. The partners believe that the newly formed Burnham-Stedman metabolomics platform will spawn collaborative opportunities with a larger set of scientists focused on metabolism.
“At the Stedman Center, we have been developing sophisticated tools for metabolic profiling for the past six years,” points out Christopher B. Newgard, Ph.D., director of the Stedman Center and W. David and Sarah W. Stedman distinguished professor in the department of pharmacology and cancer biology at Duke Medical Center.
“Burnham and Stedman Center scientists will be able to exploit the power of these technologies to define disease signatures relevant to diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other diseases,” says Daniel Kelly, M.D., scientific director, Burnham at Lake Nona. “Metabolomic approaches show great promise for identifying diagnostic markers that will aid clinicians in distinguishing disease patterns and in developing individualized treatment plans.”
