Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine announced $25 million in funding that will help support the Ignite Institute, a newly established non-profit research institute that seeks to become the nation’s proving ground for personalized medicine. The institute says it will focus on applying biomedical and technological innovations to enable individualized healthcare. To that end, it also said it has formed a partnership with Inova Health System, which includes $25 million in funding for the venture.

 

The institute will be based just outside of Washington D.C. in Virginia’s Fairfax County. The Fairfax County Economic Development Authority worked with the Virginia Economic Development Partnership to prepare the state’s proposal to secure the project for Virginia and also to secure financing for the state-of-the-art 300,000 square foot research building. Support from Virginia also includes the use of new facilities in the state-owned Center for Innovative Technology building. Pending final approval by the Board of Supervisors, the Institute secured financial backing from Fairfax County, including industrial revenue bonds, which private investors would purchase, intended to finance construction of the permanent headquarters.

 

“The Ignite Institute is transformational for Virginia’s positioning as a world-class center of excellence for research and development,” says Kaine. “The advanced medical technologies that will be developed at Ignite will be part of the key drivers in our mission to reform and improve America’s healthcare system.”

 

Dietric Stephan, founder and CEO of Ignite, was also appointed as executive director of the Translational and Personalized Medicine Center at Inova. The institute said Stephan’s dual role with Inova reflects Ignite’s focus on assuring that innovations originating from the institute and its partners can be rapidly developed and applied to bring world class healthcare to the community clinical setting. The Inova facility will serve as the clinical engine implementing new therapeutics, diagnostics and devices that target the molecular underpinnings of disease.

 

“The Ignite Institute promises to be an entirely new model in the real world application of personalized medicine,” says Knox Singleton, CEO of Inova Health System. “Inova’s partnership with Ignite will give our patients extraordinary access to some of the most leading edge diagnostics and treatments anywhere in the world. Equally important, through highly sophisticated genomic testing and counseling, it will allow individuals to optimize a lifetime of good health, avoiding many acute disorders and pushing back the onset of chronic disease.”

Ignite’s Stephan says chronic diseases are placing a “crushing” burden on the healthcare system today. He says the clinical application of personalized medicine will have a major impact on addressing these burdens. “Our vision is a world where the lives of patients and their families are improved, and we see more efficient and effective health outcomes across the entire population,” he says. “We created Ignite to demonstrate this impact here in the national capital region.”