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Health

Precision medicine

NIST is playing a pivotal role in helping to define the measurements and standards needed to ensure the promise of precision medicine, which is an emerging approach for disease prevention and treatment that takes into account an individual’s genes, environment and lifestyle.

NIST and the Promise of Precision Medicine
NIST and the Promise of Precision Medicine

News and Updates

Blog Posts

Thomas Forbes wears safety glasses as he looks at the screen attached to a piece of equipment in the lab.

Your Future Medications Could Be Personalized for You on a 3D Printer

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Justin Zook in a lab surrounded by genetic sequencing machines

Our Human Genes Are Diverse. Our Team Is Helping Create a DNA Reference Library to Reflect That.

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Callie Higgins in a lab. She is standing in front of a reflective screen surrounding an atomic force microscope.

3D Printing With Light: A Q&A With NIST's Callie Higgins

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Events

Conceptual illustration of cells, a flow cytometry stream, automation and collaboration with logos for NIST and NIAID underneath.

AI and Flow Cytometry Workshop

Mon, Jun 9 - Tue, Jun 10 2025
A NIST–FDA–NIAID Co-Organized Workshop This workshop aims to advance AI/ML applications in flow cytometry and related
Genome editing technologies

Genome Editing Consortium Workshop

Thu, Jun 12 - Fri, Jun 13 2025
The purpose of this workshop is to share and obtain feedback on current and future activities of the NIST Genome Editing

Projects and Programs

Bioprocessing Laboratory

Ongoing
Current Capabilities Computer controlled liquid nitrogen biostorage system Two culture areas including 4 monitored CO2 incubators 2 Six-foot BSLII biosafety cabinets Measurements- cell count and concentration, STR typing, flow cytometry, cell volume size distribution, conventional transmission and
Measurement Assurance Framework

Building Measurement Confidence for Cell Characterization

Ongoing
NIST collaborates with key stakeholders in industry, other government agencies, and academia to develop measurement assurance strategies and advanced measurement capabilities for cell characterization. Data and concepts developed through workshops and laboratory programs inform the development of

Cancer Biomarker Measurements and Collaborations

Ongoing
Collaborations and Cooperative Research Agreements We welcome collaborations and can help with assay validation and development of reference materials. Below are some examples of our collaborations and ways we can develop test materials. Early Detection Research Network (EDRN): Interagency agreement
component 1

Consistency Analysis and Uncertainty in ‘omic Data

Ongoing
‘Omics is increasingly moving out of the laboratory and towards use in industrial and commercial applications. For instance, in biomanufacturing, there is a need for quality control when developing biotherapeutics, which will almost certainly require a machine-learning classifier to separate

Publications

METROLOGY FOR MRI: THE FIELD YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF

Author(s)
Kathryn Keenan, Stephen Russek, Matt Hall
Quantitative MRI has been an active area of research for decades and has produced a huge range of approaches with enormous potential for patient benefit. In

A bilateral comparison of 227Th activity standards between NPL and NIST

Author(s)
Andrew Fenwick, Denis Bergeron, Brittany Broder, Emma Bendall, Jeffrey Cessna, Sean Collins, Leticia Pibida, Natasha Ramirez, Elisa Napoli
The National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (United States) each determined the massic activity and

Small variant benchmark from a complete assembly of X and Y chromosomes

Author(s)
Justin Wagner, Nathanael Olson, Jennifer McDaniel, Lindsay Harris, Chunlin Xiao, Fritz Sedlazeck, Kishwar Shafin, Andrew Carroll, Justin Zook
The sex chromosomes contain complex, important genes impacting medical phenotypes, but differ from the autosomes in their ploidy and large repetitive regions
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