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Brad Schaefer, M.D. |
Fittingly, several top geneticists will make a pilgrimage of sorts to the institute on Wednesday as part of a regional conference hosted by Munroe-Meyer staff.
The tour of the institute is part of the three-day “Heartland Regional Genetics and Newborn Screening Collaborative Annual Conference,” which starts Wednesday at the Hilton in downtown Omaha.
“Some of the best geneticists in the world are found right here,” said Brad Schaefer, M.D., associate director of the Munroe-Meyer Institute. “This is a chance to showcase it.”
The conference is expected to draw hundreds of geneticists and researchers from an eight-state region that includes Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota.
With a staff considerably larger than many other genetic institutes in the region, Munroe-Meyer is home to leading-edge work and research in genetic medicine, Dr. Schaefer said.
This staff includes five clinical geneticists, including Dr. Schaefer.
Considering there are no clinical geneticists in the state of Kansas and several other states have just a handful scattered throughout their borders, having five in one building is almost unprecedented, Dr. Schaefer said.
Aside from Wednesday’s tour of Munroe-Meyer, the second annual conference also will feature national speakers as well as seminars by Munroe-Meyer geneticists.
Presenters from UNMC include Dr. Schaefer; Warren Sanger, Ph.D., director of Munroe-Meyer’s Human Genetics Laboratory; Shelley Smith, Ph.D., Munroe-Meyer’s director of Human Molecular Genetics and Richard Lutz, M.D., a UNMC genetics, endocrinology and metabolism expert.
Dr. Sanger will speak Thursday morning about comparative genomic hybridization.
On Friday afternoon, Dr. Smith will speak about genetic causes of learning disorders while Dr. Lutz will speak about autism genetics research.
One important topic the conference will focus on is improving and standardizing care for patients with genetic diseases as well as increasing accessibility to such care, Dr. Schaefer said.
Dr. Schaefer also will speak Thursday morning about helping young people with genetic diseases get the help they need to live with their conditions.
In some places, patients with genetic diseases and their families struggle mightily to find the care they need, he said. A goal of the conference is to craft ways to alleviate such problems.
“It’s traumatic enough to have a child with a birth defect,” Dr. Schaefer said. “People shouldn’t have to struggle to find quality care.”