Teresa García Lezana is a Scientific Project Manager at European Genome-phenome Archive, which is part of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) based in Barcelona. Among her many duties, she provides support for the implementation of fair principles for genomic data management in European projects, especially in healthcare and medical R&I initiatives like GenoMed4All. Her background in translational medicine is supported by a degree in Biology, a PhD focused on liver diseases, and her current postdoctoral research in liver cancer genetics.
As part of our new series of interviews with GenoMed4All partners, Teresa reflects on the role she’s had during the project, her contributions and main learnings, and her expectations for the project’s impact after it’s officially completed in June 2025.
Involvement across work packages and interdisciplinary collaborations
In Genomed4All, the CRG team leads the Work Package 8, which aims to enhance the value of what has been done in the rest of the technical work packages by other project partners.
Our core function revolves around genomic standardization, and the final outcome is the development of the genomic standardization guidelines. For this, we have been interviewing and collecting information from the bioinformaticians involved in the project, to really understand. So we really need what kind of data analysis and formats they’ve been working with.
Through a process of sequencing and standardization, we have created this guide so other peers outside GenoMed4All can understand what has been done in the project, and can follow the same procedures, so eventually they could integrate their data with the data from GenoMed4All. Essentially, this activity allows for our data to be more interoperable and reusable.
Impact on precision medicine for hematology
As part of the CRG team, our main contribution has been towards achieving the fair usage of the data. By working together with other partners in our work package, we’ve created protocols for data access so it can be ethically found and used by other researchers.
Achieving the interoperability of the data – so it can be understood, reused and integrated by others – is a big advancement towards achieving a well-established system for precision medicine in hematology in Europe. Our hope is that the genomic standardization guidelines we’ve created will be a useful resource for the healthcare and medical community in general.
Main takeaways from this 4-year journey
GenoMed4All has made me more aware of how heterogeneous genomic data is, and how complex it is to use and reuse data that has been generated in a clinical context.
When working with different hospitals, different infrastructures and formats, the integration of this data is really complex and there are many challenges that we still need to address; so through this experience I’ve come to realize about the state in which we are in as a community in terms of data standardization.
Also, on a personal level, I’ve learned about the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration. Without the constant cooperation between researchers, clinicians and other key stakeholders, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve what we have done in GenoMed4All.
The legacy of GenoMed4All going forward
One of main legacies of GenoMed4All will be the data that have been created and curated, and that will be accessible to others.
I think the project is also setting some ground for the development of AI and precision medicine that will be used by other projects; all of us together, as a consortium, have created everlasting knowledge that can inspire others and pave the way for future developments in this area.