NIH Building 1WIKIMEDIA, NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTEThe National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) announced in a press release last week (January 14) that it will provide more than $240 million over the next four years to fund research into the genomic variation underlying common diseases.
“The time is right for a very large-scale human genome sequencing program” in order to understand, “the genetic and environmental causes of common diseases,” NHGRI Director Eric Green told reporters (via STAT News). “The kind of information that can come out of this is overwhelmingly medically important.”
To spearhead the project, NHGRI has launched the Centers for Common Disease Genomics (CCDG), which will focus on diseases including diabetes, autism, and heart disease. Researchers at four funded centers associated with universities and colleges across the U.S. will sequence tens of thousands of genomes from individuals with and without the diseases in order to identify underlying genomic causes and correlations. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute will provide an additional $20 million for the CCDG centers, ...
