Kenneth Polonsky, M.D.

DEPARTMENT OF Internal Medicine
Keywords: patient-oriented research, trials, genetic studies, clinical investigation

The Division of Clinical Sciences, established as a cross-department and cross-campus division, is designed to improve the performance of patient-oriented research. Such studies move basic science insights into the clinic, working to understand in the most practical terms why people develop diseases and how to treat those diseases. Trials of new medicines are just one example. A second type of research looks into treatment outcomes. By employing new genetic and imaging techniques, clinician-scientists will learn to “stratify” patients, classifying them to determine which drugs are most likely to be effective and cause the fewest side effects in a given individual. Success requires three things: recruiting eminent faculty who are experienced at doing patient-oriented research; providing them with the resources to perform their research, such as facilities for small-scale genetic studies and scanning and imaging capabilities; and training a new generation of physician-scientists who can answer important biological questions in human subjects. An essential part of the trials to be conducted in the DCS is the genetic makeup of the individuals participating; close ties to the university’s clinical departments and the support of the Department of Genetics are vital. Genes are critical to our predisposition to disease and to the safety and efficacy of drugs, and genetic studies increasingly will become a key component of clinical investigation.