Personalized Medicine

What to expect

At Mass General Brigham Personalized Medicine, we take a collaborative, consultative approach to advancing medicine, both within the division and with our clients. Here is what you can expect when you work with us.

For investigators and other collaborators

Getting to know you. An initial consultation allows us to fully understand your challenges and goals. We will then tailor an approach that meets your needs.

Customized to your needs. Whether it’s next-generation sequencing, phenotyping, Biobanking, or any of our other services, we customize our services for every client. We will direct you to the most knowledgeable experts and guide you every step of the way, ensuring the most successful outcomes and results that will help you achieve your research goals.

Building knowledge together. We utilize our inter-institutional knowledge, data, and infrastructure sharing through GeneInsight Network® to accelerate the evolution of our collective understanding of the molecular basis of disease into clinical practice.

We are looking forward to collaborating with you to make personalized genetic medicine a reality for all patients.

For physicians seeking testing services

Helping you get started. You are short on time and may have questions. We’re here to help you find the right tests and assist you with ordering. You can speak with one of our geneticists or physician specialists about the appropriateness of certain tests and how to use them in the clinical setting.

Comprehensive reporting services. And when the results are in, we won’t leave you to have to figure it out on your own. You will receive detailed and meaningful clinical reports of test results through GeneInsight Clinic®. Genetic counselors and geneticists are available to answer your and your patients’ questions.

Keeping you up to date. Things change fast in the world of genetics with new variants detected regularly as the database of testing data grows. Not to worry—you’ll be kept informed if new information emerges on variants identified in patient profiles through the GeneInsight Clinic® platform.

Integration with electronic health record. If you’re in the Mass General Brigham Personalize Medicine system, your patients’ test results are available in the electronic health record.

We look forward to speaking about our testing services.

For clinicians, fellows, medical students, and other trainees

Take advantage of our educational offerings. Look into the Harvard Medical School Genetics Training Program and train in our laboratory, or attend a seminar to stay on top of the latest developments in personalized medicine.

Tap into our experts. When you work with Mass General Brigham Personalized Medicine, you will have access to our team of experts in the field of personalized medicine who are eager to collaborate with you and share their knowledge to advance the field.

Meet our Leadership Team

Sami Amr, PhD, FACMG

Director, Biobank Genomics Core at Personalized Medicine
Associate Laboratory Director, Laboratory for Molecular Medicine at Personalized Medicine
Assistant Professor, Pathology, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital

Dr. Amr is the director of the Biobank Genomics Core of Personalized Medicine, where he leads a team that works with basic and translational researchers across Mass General Brigham to identify DNA, RNA, and methylation markers and signatures of disease that can help de-convolute underlying mechanisms of pathogenesis, as well as be leveraged in diagnostic and clinical assays.

Samuel (Sandy) Aronson, ALM, MA

Executive Director of Information Technology and AI Solutions

Samuel "Sandy" Aronson is the Executive Director of IT and AI Solutions for Mass General Brigham Personalized Medicine and the Senior Director of IT for our Accelerator for Clinical Transformation. His teams develop and deploy technology to improve clinical processes in clinical genetics, remote health and decentralized clinical trials. In clinical genetics, the team has built infrastructure that supports the evolution and practice of genetic based personalized medicine in both patient facing and laboratory settings. This system ecosystem enables a continuous learning process that harnesses clinical testing flows to advance knowledge surrounding genetic variation. The infrastructure includes the GeneInsight Suite of applications that were registered as a medical device and distributed. The team is now working to deepen support for whole genome sequence management and interpretation. This includes developing and validating Generative AI functionality to support variant assessment.

The team has also deployed a platform that enables remote patient management by task shifted workforces using omnichannel communication. These capabilities have been used to equitably manage large patient populations. The platform is also currently supporting multiple decentralized clinical trials. We are now enhancing these capabilities using Generative AI focused on improving trial quality and cost effectiveness.

Prior to this position, Mr. Aronson was an IT consultant to the biotechnology industry working for Tribiosys. Mr. Aronson also held several positions with Sapient Corporation, was a Strategic Consultant for Monitor Company and founded both LearningAction, a web-based training company now part of Best Software and Stanford Data Solutions, a software consulting firm. Mr. Aronson holds a Masters in Organizational Behavior and a Bachelors in Computer Science from Stanford University. He also holds a Masters focused in Biology from Harvard Extension School.

Natalie Boutin

Program Director, Biobank, Personalized Medicine
Director, Information Technology, Personalized Medicine

Natalie Boutin is program director at the Biobank and director of IT at Personalized Medicine. In this dual capacity, she is responsible for the Biobank’s operations and for its information technology infrastructure. She also oversees systems that drive clinical and research genomics at Personalized Medicine.

Matthew Lebo, PhD, FACMG

Director, Bioinformatics, Personalized Medicine
Director, Laboratory for Molecular Medicine, Personalized Medicine
Associate Professor, Pathology, Brigham and Women's and Harvard Medical School

Dr. Lebo joined Personalized Medicine as an assistant laboratory director for the Laboratory for Molecular Medicine in 2011 after completing his ABMG molecular genetics fellowship training at the Harvard Medical School Genetics Training Program. In the fall of 2013, Dr. Lebo became the head of Bioinformatics at Personalized Medicine and associate laboratory director for the Laboratory for Molecular Medicine. In 2018, he become the director of the Laboratory for Molecular Medicine.

Lisa Mahanta

Director, Clinical Laboratory Operations, Personalized Medicine

Lisa Mahanta is the director of Clinical Laboratory Operations for Personalized Medicine. She oversees laboratory operations for Personalized Medicine, including the Laboratory for Molecular Medicine. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of New Hampshire in 2000 in biology with a minor in genetics. With the center since 2005, Lisa focuses on streamlining operations and implementing solutions that reduce labor, cost, and turnaround time while improving and maintaining quality. This paradigm continues as the landscape of molecular testing continues to be both complex and dynamic.

Heather Mason-Suares, PhD, FACMG

Associate Laboratory Director, Laboratory for Molecular Medicine, Personalized Medicine
Associate Professor, Pathology, Brigham and Women's Hospital

Dr. Mason-Suares joined Personalized Medicine in 2014 as an associate laboratory director at the Laboratory for Molecular Medicine and associate laboratory director at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) Cytogenetics Laboratory. She is the program director for the BWH Laboratory Genetics and Genomics (LGG) ABMG Fellowship, part of the Harvard Medical School Genetics Training Program. Her research interests include RASopathies and prenatal diagnosis.

Pradeep Natarajan, MD, MMSc

Director of Preventive Cardiology, Massachusetts General Hospital
Paul and Phyllis Fireman Endowed Chair in Vascular Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital
Associate Director of Personalized Medicine, Mass General Brigham
Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Associate Member, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT

Dr. Pradeep Natarajan is the Associate Director of Personalized Medicine at Mass General Brigham, Director of Preventive Cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. As a principal investigator within the Cardiovascular Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Program in Medical and Population Genetics at the Broad Institute, and Harvard Medical School, he leads an interdisciplinary research group using emerging methods in biomedical informatics and human investigation to leverage naturally occurring human genetic variation to advance the prevention of cardiovascular diseases, particularly atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. He is a recognized investigative and clinical leader in the combined germline and somatic genetic basis of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease leading several research consortia and advancing novel clinical precision cardiovascular medicine paradigms.

Meini Shin

Sr. Administrative and Financial Director, Personalized Medicine

Meini Shin is the senior administrative and financial director for Personalized Medicine. She oversees the overall operation of the center, human resources, financial planning, budgeting, grant management, and all financial services including accounting, payroll, and procurement. She supports the scientific director on strategic initiatives. Meini’s background includes over 20 years of experience in financial management, planning, and budgeting.

Susan Slaugenhaupt, PhD

Co-Investigator, Mass General Brigham Biobank, Personalized Medicine
Scientific Director, Mass General Research Institute
Professor, Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital

Dr. Slaugenhaupt , is the Scientific Director of the Mass General Research Institute, a strategic initiative that will support the entire research enterprise at Mass General to foster and sustain medical innovation. She is also a Professor in the Department of Neurology at Mass General and Harvard Medical School, and an Investigator in the Center for Genomic Medicine. She also co-directs the Mass General Brigham Biobank at Mass General, an exciting initiative that will speed the translation of research discoveries into improved clinical care for patients.

Dr. Slaugenhaupt spearheads several programs and educational initiatives at Mass General, including a thriving undergraduate summer internship program. Her Research Institute team works to promote science at Mass General by increasing interactions with industry, by fundraising for Research Institute initiatives, including partnering with individual philanthropists, their families and foundations and by promoting Mass General research to the community through events and social media.

Dr. Slaugenhaupt's research focuses on two neurological disorders, familial dysautonomia (FD) and mucolipidosis type IV (MLIV), as well as the common cardiac disorder mitral valve prolapse (MVP). Discoveries in Dr. Slaugenhaupt’s laboratory have led to the successful implementation of critical population screening for FD and MLIV, and to the development of a treatment for FD that directly targets the mRNA splicing mechanism. This exciting work has led to a clinical trial of the first therapeutic for FD aimed at altering the molecular defect.

In 2013, Dr. Slaugenhaupt was named the Elizabeth G. Riley and Dan E. Smith, Jr. MGH Research Scholar. In 2016, she was honored with a prestigious Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award by the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) at NIH, and she was recently named one of the 2016 Top Ten Women to Watch in Science and Technology by the Boston Business Journal. In 2020, she was named the Elizabeth G. Riley and Daniel E. Smith, Jr. Endowed MGH Research Institute Chair.

Jordan W. Smoller, MD, ScD

Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Jerrold F. Rosenbaum Endowed Chair in Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital

Dr. Smoller is a psychiatrist, epidemiologist, and geneticist whose research focus has been understanding the genetic and environmental determinants of psychiatric disorders across the lifespan and using big data to advance precision mental health including improved methods to reduce risk and enhance resilience.

Dr. Smoller is the Jerrold F. Rosenbaum Endowed Chair in Psychiatry, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. He is Associate Chief for Research in the MGH Department of Psychiatry, Director of the Center for Precision Psychiatry, Director of the Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit in the MGH Center for Genomic Medicine, and co-Director of the Center for Suicide Research and Prevention at MGB and Harvard. Dr. Smoller is a Tepper Family MGH Research Scholar and also serves as Director of the Omics Unit of the MGH Division of Clinical Research and co-Director of the Mass General Brigham Biobank at MGH. He is also co-Director of the Mass General Brigham (T32) Training Program in Precision and Genomic Medicine, an Associate Member of the Broad Institute, and President of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics.

He has played a leading role in national and international efforts to advance precision medicine, including as a Principal Investigator (PI) in the eMERGE (Electronic Medical Records and Genomics) network, the PsycheMERGE Consortium and the New England Precision Medicine Consortium as part of the NIH All of Us Research Program.

Hana Zouk, PhD, FACMG

Assistant Laboratory Director, Laboratory for Molecular Medicine, Personalized Medicine
Instructor, Pathology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School

Dr. Zouk joined Personalized Medicine in 2016 as an assistant director at the Laboratory for Molecular Medicine after completing her ABMGG fellowship in clinical molecular genetics at the Harvard Medical School Genetics Training Program.

Dr. Zouk’s work has focused on genetic testing that combines high-throughput technologies along with advanced clinical interpretation to provide comprehensive genetic information that can be used for effective implementation in personalized medicine. She is actively involved in the end-to-end final interpretation and sign-out of clinical genetic tests, both in a diagnostic setting, and in a genomic screening environment, as a co-investigator or collaborator on various projects, where she oversees the day-to-day management of the interpretation of the genomic data and return of clinical reports to participants.