YORK, Pa. — WellSpan Health partnered with Helix, the nation’s leading population genomics company, to launch its newest Gene Health Project.
The goal of the project is to provide accurate information about a person’s genetics that could impact their health.
“Working with Helix, we hope to collect 100,000 samples and we will then do what’s called ‘whole-exome-sequencing,’ which is looking at all the genes that code for proteins, which are the substances that make us who we are,” explained Dr. David Kann, the director of precision medicine for WellSpan Health.
The project is available for anyone over eighteen years old and is non-invasive. Volunteers will have to provide their full name and date of birth. Helix also requires participants to complete an eligibility criteria and consent form.
“The benefit to the volunteers of the program is they learn about their hereditary and what the CDC calls ‘tier 1 problems,’” Kann explained.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, tier 1 problems are described as those having "significant potential for positive impact on public health based on available evidence-based guidelines and recommendations.”
Examples include a person’s genetic predisposition for inheriting heart disease or breast cancer.
“We hope to expand our view and look at a sample of almost everybody in our working population,” Kann said.
More than 1,000 samples have been collected. According to Dr. Kann, some of the results are already being used to help treat patients.
“We have found one person with a variant that puts them at risk for developing cancer and we can reduce the likelihood of that person getting cancer from somewhere near 80 percent to somewhere near 20 percent,” Kann told FOX43.
Volunteers’ information is stored in the cloud and can only be accessed by doctors or project researchers. Results from Helix are confidential, and volunteers can withdraw from the project at any time.
“When the volunteers sign consent, they allow us to use the data for research,” Kann said.
FOX43 reached out to Helix for a comment about the company’s expectations and goals for the project.
“Helix’s partnership with WellSpan Health will provide approximately 2,600 physicians and clinicians and their participating patients access to critical information that will help uncover genetic risk more efficiently at the point-of-care to improve health outcomes. Population genomics will transform health care delivery and outcomes, and Helix and WellSpan are leading the way into a future of more personalized medicine for all,” said James Lu, CEO and Co-founder of Helix.
Anyone interested in participating in the study should contact a study staff member by emailing GeneHealthProject@wellspan.org.