Johnson & Johnson has ramped up its ambitious project to learn how to predict who will develop particular diseases and find therapies to prevent or stop the disease early, when it’s most treatable.

Since the health care giant announced its groundbreaking project in February 2015, it’s expanded to include two dozen research programs with partners — in government, universities, patient advocacy groups and other drug and diagnostic test companies.

On Tuesday, J&J gave an update and announced the latest two projects. They’re meant to identify which pregnant women will develop gestational diabetes, and to identify and treat people at risk of or in early stages of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the third-leading cause of death worldwide.

Ben Wiegand, the J&J project head, said the mapping of the human genome and other recent scientific advances have made that goal feasible.

The idea is to first discover biomarkers — measurable biological and molecular signs in blood and other patient samples — indicating a disease will develop or is beginning. Next, scientists would diagnostic tests for the biomarkers.

Finally, researchers would develop new therapies, or determine which existing ones would work, to head off full-blown disease in those people. Those could include medicines, nutrition changes and therapy.