Genomic Medicine

Genomic Medicine, as defined by the NIH-NHGRI, is an emerging medical discipline that involves using genomic information about an individual as part of their clinical care (e.g., for diagnostic or therapeutic decision-making) and the health outcomes and policy implications of that clinical use." Genomic medicine implies accessing individuals genomic data and learning from those data for the implementation of more efficient interventions for that individuals, her/his family and the community.

The 2 major challenges of genomic medicine are (1) how to access the genomic data and (2) how to interpret those data. The Genomic Medicine team has been created to as a Research and Development branch intended to implement solutions for both the accession to genomic data and the interpretation of those data. Expected solutions are designed to be used for research projects and for clinical implementation at the CHU Liège and elsewhere through our commercial partners.

A few decades ago, only access to limited regions of the genome was possible. But, with the with the completion of Human Genome Project in 2003 and the advent of massive parallel sequencing technologies (Next Generation Sequencing, NGS), it is now possible to access large parts of the genome or the entire genome with a single NGS test. Those data can be compared to the reference genome, allowing the identification of genetic variations. However, NGS generate an enormous amount of data that could not be processed by traditional computing solutions. Therefore, NGS has favors a dramatic development of bioinformatics. 

Under the supervision of Prof Vincent Bours, we aim at developing and implementing NGS-based solutions to access genomic data and bioinformatic solutions to interpret those data for the clinical and research purposes. The solutions developped by our team will be implanted in accredited hospital environment and applied on different researches within our portfolio. Our areas of interest are constitutional genetics and  oncology.

Partners of this initiative are the department of Genetics of University Hospitals Liège, the Microbiology Department of the Faculty of medicine of ULiège, and XXX. Our team is composed of talented Medical Doctors, experienced research scientists and skilled bio-informaticians. We are working together to move medicine toward the direction indicated by genomic information.