When billionaire David Murdock bestowed $35 million on the Duke University School of Medicine last September, he initiated an unprecedented biomedical research study and envisioned sweeping changes in the way clinicians view and treat disease.
The study, which will analyze the genomic factors of several life-threatening diseases, will yield initial results within the year, its leaders said at a conference with the Dole Food Company owner and chair last week.
Duke researchers have recently begun to engage the physicians, patients and citizens of Kannapolis, N.C., where most of the data for the study-dubbed M.U.R.D.O.C.K., for the Measurement to Understand the Reclassification of Disease of Cabarrus and Kannapolis-will be gathered in later phases. The University opened offices in Kannapolis last week to facilitate interaction with the community.
"Everyone's very excited about it," said Victoria Christian, operational manager of the study and chief operating officer of the Duke Translational Medicine Institute. "People are clamoring to participate both at the research level and at the individual level."
The first phase, Horizon One, of the M.U.R.D.O.C.K. Study will concentrate on four diseases: obesity, osteoarthritis, hepatitis C and cardiovascular disease. Using current genomic technology, researchers at DTMI are analyzing existing biological samples to identify genomic linkages across the diseases, said Dr. Robert Califf, principal investigator of the study and director of DTMI.
"This will give us a lot of insight into biomarkers that tell us how to subdivide diseases into better categories," Califf said.
The resulting data will allow clinicians to develop personalized strategies for disease prevention based on individuals' genetic predispositions.
"These diseases face millions of Americans," Andrew Conrad, Murdock's science adviser, said at the press conference, according to the (Concord and Kannapolis) Independent Tribune. "We'll be looking at individual markers in people and comparing them to disease states, instead of looking at a crowded room and saying 23 percent of you are going to get this disease."
Although the bulk of Horizon One's current research is being conducted at Duke, it will gradually shift to the southwestern town of Kannapolis, where the Murdock-funded North Carolina Research Campus is located. The campus' main laboratory, the David H. Murdock Research Institute Core Laboratory, will be completed in December.
The study also aims to involve the Kannapolis community by holding focus group meetings to educate citizens about the study's potential benefits and welcome participation from local physicians. This outreach is to prepare for Horizon 1.5, when research staff will collect data and biological samples from Kannapolis citizens for use in Horizon Two within the next five years.
"The goal is to have a registry ready to enroll patients sometime in July, but we don't have the infrastructure ready and we haven't engaged the community," said Ashley Dunham, the study's community health project leader.
Duke faculty are also pairing individually with local physicians who share research interests in order to plan future projects.
"We're working on a foundation that's already there, and the study will strengthen the collaboration," Dunham said, adding that the study will "bring new life" to the Kannapolis area.
Study members are continuing to expand the project's collaborative nature and will reach out to other universities for researchers and funding in coming months.
"Murdock is happy with the collaboration between Duke and the other participants," Christian said. "He thinks that the study will be one of the most outstanding early products of the N.C. Research Campus."
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