Participating Labs 

The following academic organizations have labs that were part of group purchases and/or have members volunteering their expertise to different aspects of the GOAL network:

  • Baylor Scott & White Medical Center (2023)
  • Brigham & Women’s Hospital/Dana Farber Cancer Institute
  • Cedars Sinai Medical Center*
  • Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center*
  • Columbia University*
  • Cornell University* (2023)
  • Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center*
  • Emory University (2023)
  • Johns Hopkins University*
  • Kaiser Permanente, Northern California (2023)
  • The Ohio State University*
  • Medical College of Wisconsin
  • National Cancer Institute
  • New York University (2023)
  • Stanford University
  • University of Alabama at Birmingham
  • University of Calgary/Alberta Precision Labs (2023)
  • University of California Los Angeles*
  • University of California San Diego
  • University of California San Francisco
  • University of Chicago
  • University of Colorado*
  • University of Florida*
  • University of Iowa*
  • University of Michigan* (2023)
  • University of Minnesota
  • University of North Carolina
  • University of Pennsylvania
  • University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (2023)
  • University of Rochester
  • University of Texas at Houston
  • University of Texas / MD Anderson Cancer Center (2023)
  • University of Texas, San Antonio*
  • University Texas Southwestern Medical Center
  • University of Vermont
  • University of Washington
  • Washington University in Saint Louis*
  • Yale University 

*Completed Master Participation Agreement as part of the requirements for membership.

After informally gathering and growing together since 2018, GOAL was incorporated in August 2020 in partnership with the Association of Pathology Chairs (APC), the organization representing the academic departments of pathology. GOAL has 501(c)(3) non-profit designation from the IRS. APC serves as GOAL's non-profit organizational fiscal sponsor. As a grant-making organization for sponsored projects, institutional overhead must not exceed 10% of direct project costs.

Questions? Contact the GOAL Office at: [email protected]

MEMBER BENEFITS:

  • Dynamic Virtual Annual Meetings: Since 2021, annual GOAL Virtual Meetings have been produced in January with attendance growing from 100 to more than 150 registrants, including members, sponsors, and supporters.
  • In-Person Lunch Programs and Networking: In November 2022, nearly 40 GOAL participants formally met for the first time in Phoenix for a lunch program…a stark contrast to the initial casual gatherings of the co-founders’ network of professional friends starting in 2017! Nearly 80 representatives from a majority of the old and newer GOAL sites most recently attended the GOAL lunch program in Salt Lake City in November 2023.
  • Monthly GOAL Cafés keep an open forum line for sharing the latest and greatest molecular testing insights, as well as eliciting group responses to technical challenges or landscape profiling of lab practices. Members across institutions are engaged.
  • Group Purchasing Power: With financial limitations of any individual academic laboratory, the concept of cost sharing among participating academic laboratories became the foundational premise of GOAL’s strategy for its membership. Currently, GOAL is finalizing the details for a third bulk purchase of probes and reagents with nearly 20 academic laboratories contributing to the purchase. Additionally, GOAL negotiates additional discounts from a variety of diagnostic instrumentation/technology companies (suppliers/manufacturers) made exclusively for the GOAL membership.
  • Multiple Projects and Collaborations: In convening the variety of expertise among GOAL labs, multiple work groups/projects with different NGS interests have been convened throughout the last three years, including a concordance study, hematopathology, bioinformatics, shared variant curation, reporting practices, and trainee education.

SCHOLARLY ACCOMPLISHMENTS: As an organization keen on academic pursuits, GOAL groups have produced and continue to produce scholarly work, including several formal presentations at international and national conferences, as well as GOAL’s first two journal publications in 2023 with several more manuscripts and projects in progress!

  • The Genomics Organization for Academic Laboratories (GOAL): A Vision for a Genomics Future for Academic Pathology, Academic Pathology (June 18, 2023)
  • Current clinical practices and challenges in molecular testing: a GOAL Consortium Hematopathology Working Group report, Blood Advances (May 18, 2023)

JOINING GOAL: By formally joining GOAL as outlined in the GOAL Bylaws, you and your molecular lab colleagues join the member-driven, mission-focused GOAL in offering more comprehensive genomic testing to more patients resulting in:

  • Increased identification of targetable events leading to better targeted therapies for patients
  • Increased accrual to clinical trials
  • Accumulation of additional genomic data to inform hypothesis-driven inquires and future trial planning