By James McNair
The Cincinnati Enquirer

AVONDALE - Ohio Gov. Bob Taft gave a $25.2 million check Wednesday to a public-private consortium that will expand the use of computers and genetics for earlier diagnosis and personalized treatment of people with such ailments as cancer, heart disease and asthma.

Taft said the Center for Computational Medicine, one of the state's newest Wright Centers of Innovation, would create 500 new jobs and five companies to help commercialize the fruit of its research. He announced the grant six days before a vote on the Issue 1 high-tech bond issue.

Computational medicine derives from computer analysis of genetic code. The center's goal is to arm doctors with the ability to use genetic analysis to diagnose and prescribe treatments tailored for their patients. Doctors also would rely less on invasive testing.

The grant, awarded as part of Taft's $1.6 billion Third Frontier Project, went to a group led by Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. Other partners in the project include the University of Cincinnati, Procter & Gamble, Molecular Research Corp., Sun Microsystems, CincyTech USA, the CityNet and the Ohio Supercomputer Center. Three Ohio software companies - Cleveland's Acero, as well as locally based itCube and Cincom - will also participate in the project.

"We have to focus on growing areas like biomedical research and technology, where we believe we can compete with the rest of the world," Taft said at a news conference at Children's. "What we try to do with these awards is promote partnerships between the industrial and research communities."

Taft's Third Frontier program is designed to invest the $1.6 billion over 10 years to help create jobs and promote the state's high-tech work force. Issue 1 is part of the program and, if approved, would authorize the state to issue $500 million in bonds.

Proponents say Issue 1 would provide resources to expand and also recruit world-class researchers, to attract more research dollars and to help commercialize and move products from labs to markets. Opponents don't approve of the state adding to its debt and see the bond issue as a gravy train for research universities.

Taft was in suburban Dayton Monday to give an $11 million check to the Wright Center of Innovation for Advanced Data Management and Analysis at Wright State University.

The Center for Computational Medicine won't have a permanent home for about three years, but will expand on research and practices already under way.

It will be built on Albert Sabin Way just off Burnet Avenue. The site is occupied by the original Children's Hospital, which soon will be demolished, and what was a UC parking garage.

Much of the $25.2 million grant for the center will go toward additional computing power to analyze the more than 3 billion pieces of information found in each of the trillions of cells in the human body.

"This personalized, predictive approach to care represents a potentially powerful tool for achieving better health for children and adults," said Dr. Tom Boat, chairman of pediatrics and director of Cincinnati Children's Research Foundation. "The center will be a catalyst for commercialization of innovations that fully integrate genetic and genomic information into clinical medicine."

Dr. Stephen Liggett, director of the Cardiopulmonary Research Center at UC's College of Medicine, said the center seeks to develop "personalized medicine" based on a patient's genomic makeup. Combining the talents of industry and academia, he said, will help the center achieve its goals.

"If we're going to be serious about preventive medicine, we're going to have to know who's genetically predisposed to be at risk," Liggett said.

Eventually, said Dr. John Pestian, director of the Center for Computational Medicine, the science will have applications even before health problems are detected or suspected.

"Someday, we will have the ability to use genetic information from an infant to accurately predict if that patient has the propensity to develop disease or disability," Pestian said.

E-mail jmcnair@enquirer.com.