One Size Does Not Fit All:
Towards Precision & Personalized Healthcare
Tuesdays January 9 – February 6, 12:30 pm
Hal Slavkin, Professor and Dean Emeritus from USC, returns
to Crowell Library January 9th, with a new class about the recent advances in
healthcare based on new understanding of the human genome. In six sessions, participants will explore
healthcare and biotechnology, with a focus on the new personalized healthcare
options.
It was not that long ago when physicians,
dentists, pharmacists, nurses and other healthcare professionals had only a few
treatment options for patients with seemingly similar diagnosis for illnesses
or disorders. The result was that some patients responded well to treatment
while others did not. Now healthcare providers consider factors
such as genotype (an inventory of all that person’s genes), phenotype (the sum
of observable characteristics from hair color to cardiac function) and the
environment (epigenetics) in which the individual exists. Understanding the interaction of all these
factors in one person is being termed “precision medicine” – a sophisticated
assessment of each person’s genome, epigenome, phenotype, growth and
development history, environment, behaviors, and susceptibility to certain
diseases and disorders, so that precise high definition protocols can be
tailored for individual personalized health.
This
course will demonstrate how phenotype connects with genotype; the principles
underlying the development and evolutionary process of how an organism grows;
and how novel and innovative gene editing techniques can address major human
diseases and disorders such as birth defects, diabetes, cardiovascular
diseases, pulmonary disorders, periodontal diseases, cancers, mental diseases,
and neurodegenerative diseases and disorders.
Professor and Dean Emeritus
at the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry, University of Southern California,
Hal Slavkin has served as Chair of Biochemistry,
and as the Director for the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial
Research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. He lives in Marina
Del Rey.
Learn how
modern healthcare is trying to make living and growing older so much easier and
better.
