Another project at BRI has expanded into a new Center for Personalized Medicine led by Damien Chaussabel, Ph.D., a scientist at BIIR. This new center is using microarray technology to measure the expression of over 45,000 genes from a single tube of a patient's blood. What they have found is that the immune system responds in unique ways to different kinds of diseases. This allows the researchers to identify a "biosignature," which can be used to diagnose diseases. This technology might one day be used in doctors' offices and hospitals to diagnose swine flu and other diseases.

"The work being carried out at BRI has the potential to transform the way that we treat patients and diagnose diseases, including those infected with swine flu," says Michael Ramsay, M.D., president, Baylor Research Institute.

Dallas-based Baylor Research Institute, an affiliate of Baylor Health Care System, promotes research that brings innovative treatments from the laboratory to the patient bedside. The Institute focuses on basic and translational science, clinical trials, health care effectiveness and quality of care research. Currently, investigators at Baylor are conducting 800 active research protocols spanning more than 20 medical specialties. Opened in 1996, Baylor Institute for Immunology Research, a component of BRI, focuses on developing new therapies to treat conditions that involve the immune system such as cancer, autoimmune diseases, infectious diseases and organ transplantation.

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