The crowd at last week’s talk sponsored by a group called, “Science for the Public” was small.  About 10 people eventually made it to the top floor of the College of Arts and Sciences building at Boston University. But, two of them were videographers who taped the talk for The Forum Network, a website hosted by the public broadcasters at WGBH.

So, the session will virtually fulfill the non-profit group’s goal of encouraging, “appreciation for science in the adult community.…There is no science curriculum for the adult population.  So this is our attempt to keep the general public –the folks that vote and pay taxes– well informed on the vital role of science in every area of modern life…”

Thursday’s speaker was John Quackenbush, who runs The Computational Biology and Functional Genomics Laboratory at the Dana-Farber Cancer Center . He talked on, “The Advent of Personalized Genomic Medicine.”

Although Quackenbush worked on the effort to sequence the humane genome, he said that finding disease-linked genes is  “extraordinarily difficult…Having that reference genome has not changed medicine.”

But, new sequencing technology is allowing scientists “to classify human cancers in a clinically relevant ways.” And, that is allowing doctors to successfully tailor treatments for breast and skin cancer, he said.

Quackenbush is part of a group that runs the Lung Genomics Research Consortium: “LGRC is applying these new technologies in ways that will help us learn more about these devastating lung diseases, with a focus on determining why certain people are more susceptible than others to illness and how to better treat those who are affected. To develop this personalized approach to medicine, we are asking ourselves: What is in a person’s DNA that predisposes him or her to lung disease? How can we provide earlier diagnoses? How can we develop better treatments that are tailored to each individual?”