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Welcome to the USC Department of Translational Genomics

  • Department of Translational Genomics

  • Keck School of Medicine

Our department strives to make healthcare smarter, based on a vision that future advances in personalized medicine will build from, benefit, and ultimately serve an incredibly diverse set of individuals. We believe that advancing precision medicine to affect a diverse set of populations requires diversity in leadership. Our members and scientists span diverse backgrounds and experience, and collectively we are committed to integrating these together to improve lives by combining the best genome science with the best clinical care.

Vision and Direction

Where our team strives to make healthcare smarter, based on a vision that future advances in personalized medicine will build from, benefit, and ultimately serve an incredibly diverse set of individuals.

Medicine is undergoing one of its biggest transitions in recent history. For the first time, we can treat patients based not on what works best for an average person in the population, but based on what will work best for each individual patient.

Personalized medicine, also known as precision medicine, has been enabled by game-changing discoveries in genomics. Our deep understanding of DNA and how it varies from person to person is powering a new golden age of diagnostics and treatment, as well as predictive and preventive medicine. In areas like cancer and rare disease, however, it is just the starting point as we utilize high-throughput technology to integrate information from the molecular and systems-level to ultimately improve patient outcomes.

Focus On The Value of Diversity

We believe that precision medicine doesn’t build or benefit from focusing on one population, but instead requires studies involving diverse populations. The diversity of Los Angeles in many ways mirrors the future diversity of healthcare across America, highlighting its challenges and opportunities. We launched USC Translational Genomics to serve as a catalyst for precision medicine — a home for scientific and medical experts dedicated to challenging the status quo in healthcare by implementing and advancing precision medicine across all populations.

With a foundation of cutting-edge scientific facilities at the USC Keck School of Medicine, our renowned team of researchers and physicians is collaborating to realize the potential of genome-based medicine with the understanding that these

To realize the promise of precision medicine, we need to understand the molecular and genetic diversity across all individuals. We believe that precision medicine doesn’t build or benefit from focusing on one population, but instead requires studies involving diverse populations.

The diversity of Los Angeles in many ways mirrors the future diversity of healthcare across America, highlighting its challenges and opportunities. We launched USC Translational Genomics to serve as a catalyst for precision medicine — a home for scientific and medical experts dedicated to challenging the status quo in healthcare by implementing and advancing precision medicine across all populations.

With a foundation of cutting-edge scientific facilities at the USC Keck School of Medicine, our renowned team of researchers and physicians is collaborating to realize the potential of genome- based medicine with the understanding that these advances will be made from and serve the diverse clinical populations that will make up the future of healthcare.

David Craig Quote

We also believe that advancing precision medicine to affect a diverse set of populations requires diversity in leadership. Our faculty
span diverse backgrounds and experience, and collectively we are committed to integrating these together to improve lives by combining the best genome science with the best clinical care.

Our scientists are utilizing next-generation genomic (DNA), transcriptomic (RNA), and proteomic (protein) sequencing technologies to shed light on a variety of diseases, and were among the first to prospectively apply these to improving patient care and treatment. For example, David W. Craig and John Carpten helped lead one of the first studies of whole-genome and transcriptome sequencing for the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer. This foundational work led to other studies in late-stage metastatic oncology including melanoma, pediatric oncology, pancreatic cancer, glioblastoma, and colorectal cancer. As part of their efforts, they helped establish standards and frameworks by which groups across the world apply clinical medicine. They led the development of one of the first CAP/CLIA certified laboratories focused on integrated analysis of whole-genome and transcriptome data, working with the FDA and others on establishing best practices for applying these approaches in clinical studies. They have helped lead the establishment of standards and references for other laboratories to implement similar approaches, partnering with researchers at healthcare systems across the country. As part of the new department and institute, they are building and expanding such efforts to tackle integration across multiple scales and systems. They are using the latest methods and technology and integrating these directly within the Keck healthcare system from the ground up.

David W. Craig has utilized integrated analysis of DNA and RNA to improve diagnosis in children with rare neurological conditions. He helped to establish a research clinic enrolling thousands of individuals across hundreds of families, developing approaches that improved diagnosing children at a genetic level from 5% to nearly 50%. He is now partnering with Keck leaders in cardiothoracic surgery to apply these methods in new populations and conditions.
Advancing precision medicine means building and creating the informatics systems to gather, integrate, and analyze patient data at massive scales, across multiple dimensions and time points in decision making, for clinical value and utility. The scale of data our scientists sift through on each patient is massive and requires the integration of bioinformatics, statistics, genetics, epidemiology, clinical medicine and public and global health reports. Working with David W. Craig, Enrique I. Velazquez-Villarreal, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., M.S., is integrating clinical and genomic data from a variety of technologies to assemble a more complete reference library in hopes of developing machine-learning tools that more rapidly help physicians access the critical decision-making datapoints they need.

Department of Translational Genomics at Keck School of Medicine offers a Master of Science (MS) degree in Translational Biotechnology. This program combines a unique curriculum and distinctive practical training that exposes students to biotechnology and its applications in translating genomic and molecular insights into developing novel therapies and precision medicine. Drawing strength from the Keck School of Medicine faculty’s education, research, and practice expertise, this program educates students on approaches used in the academic research, biotechnology and medical sciences industries.

For official program information please visit our page in Keck School of Medicine of USC web site and the catalogue page in University of Southern California web site.

USC's Department of Translational Genomics at Keck's School of Medicine is offering an intensive two-year MS program in biomedical informatics focusing on bioinformatics within health-related fields.  This program is focused on training individuals who have strong backgrounds in laboratory-based biomedical sciences and seek the bioinformatic skills for analyzing, processing, and managing large-scale data. Graduates will be suited to work as applied bioinformaticians within academic research laboratories, clinical research laboratories, pharmaceutical companies, and biotechnology companies.

Keck School of Medicine Department of Translational Genomics offers a Graduate Certificate in Translation and Entrepreneurship in Biomedical Sciences (TEBS).  This program combines a unique curriculum and distinctive practical training to enable students who already have advanced biosciences training to gain familiarity with drug and device development from the initial discovery process, the regulatory framework, the processes involved in management of private and public capital to develop growing markets, and the economics, business, and law terminologies important in navigation of the commercialization process.

For official program information please visit our page in Keck School of Medicine of USC web site and the catalogue page in University of Southern California web site.

University of Southern California