Putting the SPARC in Genomic Research
UT Southwestern ❘ Discovery@UTSW 2026 ❘ P18 Genomic Research
UT Southwestern is building one of the largest biobanks in the country, with a goal of redefining how genetics research informs clinical care.
Eric Peterson, M.D., M.P.H., believes that UT Southwestern’s new Sequencing Populations to Accelerate Research and Care (SPARC) program will help unlock the future of medical research.
It’s a bold objective, but transformative science requires equally bold ambitions. By uniting genomic sequencing with real-world clinical data, SPARC aims to accelerate the translation of research findings into clinical application on an unprecedented scale.
Dr. Peterson, Vice Provost and Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Research at UT Southwestern, has been working for more than a year to bring SPARC to life. The program, announced in August 2025, promises to transform how research is conducted across UT Southwestern and how it is used.
At its core, SPARC will create an institutional biobank and perform whole-exome sequencing (WES) on up to 150,000 patients in collaboration with biotechnology partner Regeneron. WES is a lab test that reads the parts of DNA that contain instructions for making proteins – the exome – and analyzes them to find genetic mutations that may cause disease or other health conditions.
How Patients Can Join
Much like the landmark Dallas Heart Study, which just marked its 25th year, SPARC will align genomic and clinical data to identify new genetic drivers of disease and therapeutic response.
All patients treated at UTSW and Children’s Health are eligible to participate in SPARC, with enrollment conducted through online and in-person recruitment. Participants provide a small blood sample, often drawn as part of routine clinical care. In return, they can receive information on their genetic ancestry, screening for important genetic risk markers, genetic risk scores for specific diseases, and genetic counseling upon request.
Population Health at Scale
Once fully implemented, SPARC will allow investigators to explore genetic connections to disease across a large, diverse population. Linked genetic and clinical data will be available through the SPARC database, eliminating the need for time-consuming participant recruitment and costly testing.
Just as important, SPARC will connect both genetic insights and ongoing research to clinical care.
“We often talk about the promise of population health and precision medicine, but those goals are difficult to realize in practice,” Dr. Peterson says. “Studies show that about 5% of the population carries actionable genetic variants, such as BRCA gene mutations that increase breast cancer risk. For patients who opt in, we’ll offer that information to their physicians, enabling proactive diagnosis and preventive care. It can also guide downstream screening for family members. That’s how we begin to practice population health at scale.”
SPARC will be housed in the Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development at UT Southwestern, under the leadership of Ralph DeBerardinis, M.D., Ph.D. Alexandre Bolze, Ph.D., joined UTSW last fall to serve as SPARC Director.
“We have a great team in place and I’m excited to see SPARC take shape,” Dr. Peterson says. “The future of genetics’ role in research and clinical care is being designed right here at UT Southwestern.”