3 Indy hospitals participate in genome research

INDIANAPOLIS — Three Indianapolis hospitals are participating in a national cancer research project.

The Indianapolis Star reports St. Francis, St. Vincent Health and Community Health Network announced Wednesday they’ve been participating in the National Institutes of Health’s Cancer Genome Atlas Project. The hospitals have been sharing cancer tissue and data with the International Genomics Consortium in Phoenix for the past year. Only 14 hospitals nationwide were chosen to participate.

The project’s goal is to understand how cancer develops on a molecular level by studying how tumors from all types of cancer grow and change.

International Genomics Consortium CEO Dr. Robert Penny says this is the first large-scale project of its kind, and 60 percent of its tissue samples have come from Indiana.