Down curved paths bisecting a manicured courtyard sits a classic red-bricked structure that is quintessential Harvard. Indeed, when Harvard Medical School-Partners HealthCare Center for Genetics and Genomics (HPCGG) moved into the facility in 2001, planners hoped to reflect tradition in architecture as well as excellence.

But the facility, HPCGG’s Laboratory for Molecular Medicine, also displays a contemporary twist: above the front entrance rests a serpentine abstraction, a red double helix, the symbol that Harvard and Partners HealthCare are also poised to usher in a new wave of personalized medicine. 

This movement is characterized by a continuum, in which facilities, researchers, doctors, and patients are connected -- either via information technology, or in the case of HPCGG, housed under one roof. The goal is to provide the space, literally, for “bench-to-bedside” studies, in which knowledge flows relatively unimpeded from basic research to clinical treatment.

That goal in mind, HPCGG has outfitted its state-of-the-art laboratories with high-speed throughput equipment and technologies: Biomek and Multimek robots, PCR machines -- to make millions of DNA copies -- and a powerful mass spectrometry system for determining the size of mere snippets of DNA, to name just a few. The overall idea is integration: building up the best genomics and proteomics analysis technologies and linking them through cutting-edge information technology (IT). This integrated environment allows investigators to make more powerful discoveries that, ultimately, better help today’s patients.

But, as cutting edge as the infrastructure is today, planners at the HPCGG were also thinking even farther toward tomorrow. They laid the technological groundwork for doctors to send samples and clinical information back to the lab. For example, the HPCGG has set up efficient services to manage biological samples (e.g. blood or tissue): an award-winning IT system and a clinical laboratory that meets best-practice standards.

The overall idea is to give HPCGG doctors the tools and methods that cycle back to help basic researchers design better studies. This seamless transfer of information and resources marks the next stage of individualized medicine, “bench-to-bedside-to-bench.”

Perhaps the best way to illustrate this approach to personalized medicine is with the case of cardiomyopathy, as studied by Christine Seidman, M.D., and Jon Seidman, Ph.D., at HPCGG and Harvard Medical School.