The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIHMD) have jointly funded the Clinical Sequencing Evidence-generating Research (CSER) Consortium. Continuing from the Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research (CSER1) Consortium's successes, CSER research focuses on diverse and medically-underserved populations, and aims to generate best practices and cutting-edge approaches to ensure that genomic medicine can be applied effectively in clinical settings regardless of racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic background.
CSER has awarded grants to six clinical sites and one coordinating center. In addition to recruiting at least 60 percent of their participants from diverse or medically-underserved populations, CSER clinical sites share common themes that include studying patient and familial responses to genomic testing; evaluating interactions between patients, clinicians, and laboratories; and building an evidence base to support clinical decision making by assimilating genomic, clinical, and healthcare data together. Aiding CSER clinical sites is the coordinating center that will provide administrative, organizational, and logistical support to facilitate collaborations across individual CSER projects.