The Buck Institute for Research on Aging and strategic partner Phenome Health today announced a four-year award of up to $52M from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to support its groundbreaking research project, “Personalized Analytics for Transforming Health (PATH): A PATH Toward Proactive Health.” The project aims to revolutionize healthcare by harnessing the power of advanced analytics and AI to predict and prevent diseases with the goal of increasing individual healthspan.
ARPA-H’s investment in the PATH project underscores the agency’s commitment to bold, high-impact research that has the potential to transform human health. This innovative project, led by teams at the Buck Institute in Novato, CA and Phenome Health in Seattle, WA, will take advantage of the rapid accumulation of human health data to transform healthcare from a reactive to a proactive model. A key component of the project will be the recruitment of a cohort of individuals who will become the most deeply characterized humans ever. Additionally, the team has partnered with the nonprofit 4YouandMe to incorporate digital wearables to identify and track the trajectory of disease.
Buck Principal Investigator and Distinguished Professor and Phenome Health CEO Lee Hood, MD, PhD, has been pursuing work in personalized medicine for over 40 years, since pioneering the key technology for data-driven health, automated DNA sequencing, and the Human Genome Project. “This research initiative is the first step of many to embark on a bold, new vision for biomedical research, data-driven analyses of individuals combined with a systems analysis of the data,” Hood says. “It will build on important work over the last decade to offer new opportunities for optimizing healthspan and the early detection and prevention of chronic disease.”
The partnership of the Buck Institute and Phenome Health combines unmatched expertise in scientific wellness and the biology of aging with a groundbreaking data-driven approach to human health. The institutions are uniquely situated to realize the PATH project’s goal of building the next generation of diagnostics, AI and infrastructure that will shape the future of healthcare in the United States. “We are thrilled to receive this award to support our ambitious vision for personalized healthcare,” said Eric Verdin, MD, CEO and President of the Buck Institute. “The PATH project has the potential to significantly impact the lives of millions of people by providing foundational data and analytics for healthy aging.” The PATH project will address key challenges in data integration, analysis, and interpretation. By defining biological rhythms, harmonizing global datasets, identifying disease subtypes, developing non-invasive monitoring technologies, and creating a personalized AI-driven recommendation engine, the PATH project will pave the way for a new era of precision medicine.
The program’s five key areas of focus include:
- Defining Biological Rhythms: Understanding the daily and weekly patterns of biological signals to provide essential context for health data analysis.
- Harmonizing Global Datasets: Integrating large-scale health datasets from around the world to enhance discovery and accelerate research.
- Identifying Disease Subtypes: Using advanced analytics to define distinct chronic disease subgroups based on molecular signatures that will enable identifying new drug targets for interventions.
- Developing Non-Invasive Monitoring: Creating wearable technology to track diabetes risk and progression, thus enabling early detection and prevention.
- Building a Personalized Recommendation Engine: Developing an AI-driven tool to provide tailored health recommendations based on individual data.
The Buck Institute and Phenome Health are committed to collaborating with academic institutions, healthcare providers, and industry partners to ensure the successful implementation of the PATH project and its potential to transform healthcare.
About the Buck Institute
Our success will ultimately change the world’s health. At the Buck, we aim to end the threat of age-related diseases for this and future generations by bringing together the most capable and passionate scientists from a broad range of disciplines to identify and impede the ways in which we age. An independent, nonprofit institution, our goal is to increase human healthspan, or the healthy years of life. Globally recognized as the pioneer and leader in efforts to target aging, the number one risk factor for serious diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, macular degeneration, heart disease, and diabetes, the Buck wants to help people live better longer. Learn more at: https://buckinstitute.org
About Phenome Health
Phenome Health is a 501(c)(3) organization committed to pioneering data-driven health that will lead to fundamental paradigm change in healthcare replacing our current disease focus with a healthcare of optimizing wellness and avoiding disease for every individual. We have assembled an ecosystem of partners and resources to employ a powerful approach to individual population health. We are a unique team of biotechnology, health, clinical, genetic and computational technology experts spread across the United States. Learn more at: https://phenomehealth.org