Grant: Operating Grant - Priority Announcement: Ethics

Our project aims to explore the socio-ethical challenges of integrating whole genome sequencing approaches into clinical practice. More specifically, we aim to lay an evidence-based empirical foundation that can both anticipate and recognize the socio-ethical and scientific challenges of integrating WGS approaches into clinical practice, both for diseases affecting vulnerable research populations (e.g., bipolar affective disorders, congenital heart disease) as well as in a field holding promise for the general population (e.g., nutrigenomics/metabolic disorders), with a view to develop policy documents to help manage and meet these socio-ethical challenges. In keeping with our recent research work on the ethical and social issues raised by the use of next-generation sequencing technologies to identify genes involved in these three diseases, and anticipating that key genes and biochemical pathways playing an important role in these disorders could lead directly to clinically relevant diagnostic and therapeutic applications for a many individuals affected or at risk for these diseases, coupled to the advent of personalized medicine, and finally to best help researchers and clinicians in ways that anticipate and prevent, rather than react and respond to, socio-ethical conflicts, we therefore aim to analyze the socio-ethical issues and challenges at the juncture between omics research and the clinic.