Rutgers Geneticist Tara Matise and collaborators Dr. Steve Buyske and Dr. Gary Heiman are at the core of a new $31 million research initiative promoting scientific research into how genes and specific diseases are linked.
Funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute and the National Institute of Mental Health, Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology is a four-year project promoting additional research into how particular genes are related to complex diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer, according to the project’s Web site.
“The idea is to follow up on previously published findings that link genes to disease,” Matise said. “More specifically, this particular project is working with four large cohort studies that include large numbers of individuals from different ethnic populations, so we are taking these previously public findings and evaluating them in other populations.”
The project will confirm previous associations between variations in the genome and specific diseases, but will also be evaluating whether those variations are important in specific ethnic groups or in all ethnic groups, Matise said
“We will be evaluating how the mutations differ among the different groups,” she said.
The institutes are supporting this new research on how genetic variants are related to a person’s biological and physical characteristics, such as weight, blood sugar levels or cholesterol levels. The scientists will also research how non-genetic factors such as smoking or diet may interact with genetic factors or each other to influence health outcomes, according to the Web site.
“Some factors that impact how these variations affect the disease, like socioeconomic variables, diet, weight and cholesterol levels, may have been looked at before in some ethnic groups but definitely not in all the ethnic groups that we will be looking at,” Matise said.
The team has begun the first round of analysis, focusing first on type-2 diabetes, obesity, coronary heart disease, hypertension, autoimmune diseases and stroke, she said.
Each of the four studies has different collections of ethnic groups within them.
One of the four research studies on this project is actually a group of six cohorts, so the study will really be evaluating nine different cohorts, Matise said.
The ethnic groups represented among these nine cohorts are Asian Americans, black Americans, Caucasians, Hispanic Americans, native Hawaiians and American Indians, according to the Web site.
“I don’t think anybody has taken part in research like this before,” Buyske said. “We are looking at a small number of variants, but in a huge number of people, maybe three or four thousand, and nobody has done that.”
The project has four research centers and one coordinating center located at the University with others located at Vanderbilt University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Hawaii Cancer Research Center and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, according to a University press release.
“The coordinating center helps support the research centers if they need assistance, which is unlikely because they are all fairly sophisticated,” Buyske said. “The main thing we do is support the group effort part of it, we have four different places but we are all looking at a common set of genetic variants.”
While the coordinating center does not do any primary analysis, they help the four research centers communicate effectively with one another, Buyske said.
“We are hoping, though it depends on the four research groups, to also have cross-study analyses where we can combine the results from the four groups to get stronger and more detailed results,” he said.
The idea of having multiple research centers and a coordinating center is new to biology, he said.
The project aims to lay the groundwork for future experiments in cultured cells to identify the exact biological mechanism affected by each genetic variant and how it interacts with other biological and environmental factors, according to the Web site.
The study also plays a very important role with respect to prevention for the future, Matise said.
“The study should increase our ability to identify persons at risk for the traits that we look at and potentially to identify lifestyle and environmental changes they could make to reduce the risk,” she said.
Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy junior Marc Oakley said studies like this are imperative for the future of medicine.
“This research project will highlight areas that medicine can be especially useful in assisting people with specific variants in their genes,” Oakley said. “It will always be necessary to have studies like this, it’s always advantageous because science is constantly improving to better fit the future.”
The group said while they do not have any University students working on the project right now, they do hope to involve students in later stages.
“We’re going to increase the knowledge about what causes these diseases in specific ethnic groups,” Matise said. “It’s how the role of genetics differs between ethnic groups with respect to these specific diseases and how lifestyle choices interact with physical characteristics.”
Multimillion-dollar grant bankrolls genetic research
Published: Thursday, January 22, 2009
Updated: Thursday, January 22, 2009
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Congratulations!! Sounds like the seeds we planted years ago are now sprouting in Rutgers Biology. John W C Bird, Professor II Emeritous, and Director, Bureau of Biological Research, Emeritous.
