NEW HAVEN, CT (April 19, 2018) – Yale New Haven Hospital and Yale School of Medicine (YSM) today jointly announced the appointment of Michael F. Murray, MD to become the director of Clinical Operations for Yale School of Medicine and Yale New Haven Hospital’s Center for Genomic Health.
Dr. Murray will lead a center dedicated to improving the treatment of Yale New Haven Health patients and those across the globe through the use of genetic analysis. Dr. Murray will oversee the repository that will extract DNA from select patients who consent, and then catalogue the information in collaboration with electronic medical records. Once fully established, this precision medical information will be available to researchers, without patient identifiers, to analyze medical history as linked with genetic code.
“Access to data like this will be a game changer,” said Dr. Murray “As this project progresses, researchers will be able to study very specific cohorts of patients in order to find new risk factors and potentially new treatments based on the changes in DNA that link to medical history.”
“We are very happy to welcome Dr. Murray to our institution and excited about the collaboration with Yale New Haven Hospital to move genetic research forward,” said Robert J. Alpern, MD, dean, Yale School of Medicine. “YSM has been a pioneer in genetics since establishing the first department of genetics in a U.S. medical school in 1972.”
Patients who participate in the DNA collection may also directly benefit from the research by receiving genetic information back from the project that they and their doctors can use to lower their risk of diseases such as cancer and heart disease. For instance, only about 20 percent of those with cancer risk based on defective BRCA genes know they have it. This precision medicine cohort could uncover patients with damaging changes to those genes in order to both help determine who would benefit from medical intervention and learn more about cancer disease pathways.
“Dr. Murray brings a wealth of knowledge to Yale New Haven Health and extensive experience in genetic research and analysis,” said Murat Gunel, MD, chief of Neurosurgery, Yale New Haven Health and chair of the Yale School of Medicine Department of Neurosurgery. “With his leadership, we will create the foundation for ground-breaking genetic research on cancer and cardiac risk and treatment.”
Murray joins Yale New Haven Hospital from Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania where he served as director of Clinical Genomics in the Genomic Medicine Institute and professor at the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine. At Geisinger he established the return of genomic results program for members of the MyCode cohort. Prior to his work at Geisinger he was the clinical chief of Genetics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston where he was a co-principal investigator on the MedSeq project.
“Dr. Murray has led one of the largest efforts in personalized medicine in the U.S. and his expertise and leadership will place genetics and our genomes at the center of diagnosis and disease prevention at Yale New Haven,” said Antonio J. Giraldez, PhD, chair and professor of Genetics, YSM. “His efforts will have a tremendous impact not only in our current patients but will also inform future diagnosis, therapies and create new knowledge to benefit current and future generations.”
Dr. Murray will continue to serve as co-chair of a National Academy of Medicine workgroup on using genomic screening in asymptomatic populations. He will maintain residences in New Haven and Massachusetts.
Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH), part of Yale New Haven Health, is a nationally recognized, 1,541-bed, not-for-profit hospital serving as the primary teaching hospital for the Yale School of Medicine (YSM). Founded as the fourth voluntary hospital in the U.S. in 1826, today, YNHH has two New Haven-based campuses, and also includes Yale New Haven Children's Hospital, Yale New Haven Psychiatric Hospital and Smilow Cancer Hospital. YNHH has received Magnet designation from the American Nurses Credentialing Center, the nation’s highest honor of nursing excellence. YNHH has a combined medical staff of about 4,500 university and community physicians practicing in more than 100 specialties. www.ynhh.org
