TAMPA Imagine being able to use a person's unique genetic code to find the right treatment for heart failure, asthma or even the dreaded common cold.

That's the focus of Dr. Stephen Liggett, one of the newest additions to the University of South Florida's Morsani College of Medicine.

Liggett, 57, began work earlier this month as director of the USF Health Personalized Medicine Institute. He is a national leader in the emerging field, and has attracted millions in research dollars from the National Institutes of Health.

One of his first orders of business will be to collaborate with Dr. Leslie Miller, head of the USF Health Heart Institute, which this spring received $8.9 million in state and county funding to begin developing genomics-based personalized approaches to cardiovascular care.

Liggett comes to USF from the University of Maryland, where he was a professor of medicine and physiology and director of its cardiopulmonary genomics program.

We caught up with Liggett during his first week on the job:

What is personalized medicine?

It's the use of information obtained from an individual's genetic code, or genome, to tailor their medical care. There are three areas where genomic information is particularly useful:

The prediction of whether a person is at risk for developing a disease.

The ability to predict the course, or degree of severity, of a disease in patients.

Read more:

National leader in personalized medicine heads new institute at USF Health