Personal Genome Project

PGP-10

The first ten participants in the PGP, called the "PGP-10", have volunteered to share their DNA sequences, medical records, and other personal information with the research community and the general public.

George M. Church, Ph.D. is a Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences & Technology at Harvard and MIT. With Walter Gilbert he developed the first direct genomic sequencing method in 1984 and helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984 while he was a Research Scientist at newly-formed Biogen Inc. He invented the broadly-applied concepts of molecular multiplexing and tags, homologous recombination methods, and DNA array synthesizers. Technology transfer of automated sequencing & software to Genome Therapeutics Corp. resulted in the first commercial genome sequence, (the human pathogen, Helicobacter pylori) in 1994. He initiated the Personal Genome Project (PGP) in 2005. He is director of the U.S. Department of Energy Center on Bioenergy at Harvard & MIT and director of the National Institutes of Health (NHGRI) Center of Excellence in Genomic Science at Harvard, MIT & Washington University. He has been advisor to 22 companies, most recently co-founding (with Joseph Jacobson, Jay Keasling, and Drew Endy) Codon Devices, a biotech startup dedicated to synthetic biology and (with Chris Somerville) founding LS9, which is focused on biofuels. He is a senior editor for Nature EMBO Molecular Systems Biology.

Esther Dyson is actively involved in improving the world's health, both as an investor and as the publisher on the Internet of her own genome and health records, as part of George Church's Personal Genome Project. She believes fiercely in the power of information to affect people's behavior and to improve the quality of health care. She brings to her work insights from economics, information technology, management practice and practical psychology. As an investor, she was an early investor in and board member of Medscape, now part of WebMD. She was also an investor in Medstory, now part of Microsoft. Currently, she is an investor in and sits on the board of 23andMe. She is also an investor in PatientsLikeMe, Medicalgorithmics, Ovusoft and Resilient. She has written two monographs on electronic records and health information liquidity, and ran the 2005 Personal Health Information workshop co-sponsored by New York's New School University.

Misha Angrist, Ph.D., is Science Editor at the Duke University Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy. He holds a doctorate in Genetics from Case Western Reserve University, an MFA in Writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars and was formerly a board-eligible genetic counselor. He has worked as a researcher, biotechnology consultant, writer and editor. With Huntington F. Willard he is author of The Genome Revolution: DNA, Health and Society (forthcoming from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press). He lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Keith Batchelder, M.D. is the founder and CEO of Genomic Healthcare Strategies, a company focused on the changes in healthcare resulting from advances in molecular medicine. Dr. Batchelder is interested in the intersection of the scientific, business and societal promises and challenges raised by personalized medicine. His area of expertise is in the analysis of new markets, channels, partners, and the new science supporting the rapidly evolving practice of medicine and wellness. During a career that has spanned medical research, clinical practice, and management in start-ups and large organizations, Dr. Batchelder has served as chief technical officer of WorldCare International Clinical Trials, where he used biomarkers as surrogate endpoints for successful FDA approvals; as CIO of Harvard Salud Integral, where he helped to raise funding and grow a start-up HMO in Mexico City; as a principal of AMICAS Corp, where he took a web-based radiology system from concept to a venture-funded and profitable software company; and at Massachusetts General Hospital for eight years, where he conducted research in drug discovery and published in peer reviewed journals. Dr. Batchelder was educated at Middlebury College, the Hahnemann University School of Medicine, received postgraduate training in Medical Informatics at The Boston VA Hospital and completed a fellowship at the Food and Drug Administration.

Rosalynn Gill, Ph.D., is a founder and Chief Science Officer of Sciona, an international company that provides personalized health and nutrition recommendations based on an individual’s diet, lifestyle and unique genetic profile. Dr. Gill-Garrison is also on the panel of experts at Genelex. Dr. Gill received her Ph.D. in Biological Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, where she focused on the DNA-damaging effects of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in animal and bacterial models. She went to the UK in 1994 to the Department of Oncology at University College London before co-founding Sciona in 2000.

John D. Halamka, M.D. M.S., is Chief Information Officer of the CareGroup Health System, Chief Information Officer and Dean for Technology at Harvard Medical School, Chairman of the New England Health Electronic Data Interchange Network (NEHEN), CEO of MA-SHARE (the Regional Health Information Organization), Chair of the US Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP), and a practicing Emergency Physician. As Chief Information Officer at CareGroup, he is responsible for all clinical, financial, administrative and academic information technology serving 3000 doctors, 14000 employees and two million patients. As Chief Information Officer and Dean for Technology at Harvard Medical School, he oversees all educational, research and administrative computing for 18000 faculty and 3000 students. As Chairman of NEHEN he oversees the administrative data exchange in Massachusetts. As CEO of MA-SHARE he oversees the clinical data exchange efforts in Massachusetts. As Chair of HITSP he coordinates the process of electronic standards harmonization among stakeholders nationwide.

Stanley N. Lapidus is Chairman and CEO of Helicos BioSciences Corp. He is an experienced life-science entrepreneur. Helicos is his third life-science start-up. In 1995 he founded EXACT Sciences Corporation (NASDAQ: EXAS), an applied genomics company that develops and markets non-invasive, DNA-based methods for early detection of colorectal and other common cancers. He served as the CEO from 1995 to 2001 and Chairman of EXACT Sciences' Board of Directors from 2000 until the end of 2005. Prior to EXACT, Mr. Lapidus founded Cytyc Corporation (NASDAQ:CYTC) and was President and CEO from 1987 through 1994. In addition to his entrepreneurial activities, Mr. Lapidus holds academic appointments in the Pathology Department at Tufts University Medical School and MIT's Sloan School of Management. He earned a BSEE from Cooper Union. He has served as a trustee of Cooper Union since 2002. Mr. Lapidus holds 30 issued patents.

Kirk M. Maxey, M.D., was born in Kanab, Utah in 1955 and spent his childhood in several of the western National Parks, where his parents worked. Dr. Maxey graduated from Colorado State University with a degree in organic chemistry in 1977. After spending several years as a medicinal chemist at the Upjohn/Pharmacia Company (now Pfizer) in Kalamazoo, he entered medical school at the University of Michigan. Following graduation he became CEO of Cayman Chemical, a research biochemical company that he started while in medical school. Dr. Maxey now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his wife and three children. He enjoys outdoor activities such as rock climbing, fly fishing, farming and riding horses. He enjoys running to keep fit, and has completed several marathons. When indoors, Dr. Maxey likes to play (guitar and banjo) and listen to music (country western, classic rock and classical.) He has authored several patents relating to various prostaglandins as pharmaceuticls, methods for operating open access publishing, and management of geneticaly modified organisms. He helps manage both the Donor Sibling Registry and the Cayman Biomedical Research Institute. These non-profit organizations are active in the reform of the human gametic tissue collection and donation industry.

James L. Sherley, M.D., Ph.D. is a Senior Scientist at the Boston Biomedical Research Institute in Watertown, Massachusetts (USA). Dr. Sherley joined the faculty of BBRI in 2007 to continue his research as a new member of BBRI Programs in Regenerative Biology and Cancer. Dr. Sherley graduated from Harvard College with a B.A. degree in biology in 1980. He completed M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1988. After post-doctoral studies at Princeton University, he joined the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia as principal investigator in 1991. In 1998, he joined the faculty of the future Biological Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Sherley is a 1993 Pew Scholar, 2003 Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar, and 2006 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award recipient.

Steven Pinker, Ph.D. is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, and has also taught at Stanford and MIT. His research on visual cognition and the psychology of language has won prizes from the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and the American Psychological Association. He has also received five honorary doctorates, several teaching awards, and numerous prizes for his books The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, and The Blank Slate. He serves on the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary and many editorial boards, and often writes for Time, The New York Times, The New Republic, and other publications. He has been named Humanist of the Year, and is listed in Foreign Policy and Prospect magazine’s “The World’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals” and in Time magazine’s “The 100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” His latest book is The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, published by Penguin books in the fall of 2007.

 

Last Updated: 06/02/2008