The National Institute of Health has awarded $20 million to the
University of Maryland School of Medicine's Institute for Genome Sciences to create a Genomic Sequencing Center for Infectious Diseases. The money will be used to sequence and analyze the genomes of infectious organisms, including agents of bioterrorism and new or emerging diseases. The grant is the largest the 2-year-old institute has received to date.
The upcoming center could have significant impact, helping the medical community with the sudden outbreak of emerging diseases such as H1N1 flu, SARS and food-borne illnesses. Genomic research into these emerging diseases can be used to develop new diagnostic and treatment tools to combat infection.
"This project places the University of Maryland School of Medicine and IGS front and center in infectious disease research nationwide. Our work under this project could lead to new drugs, vaccines and diagnostic tools in the fight against infectious diseases, from emerging diseases," says Claire Fraser-Liggett, Ph.D., director of IGS and a professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Not only will the grant put the IGS and Baltimore on the national radar for its genomic research, it is also designed to encourage collaboration between the IGS and outside clinicians or other scientists with unusual or significant pathogen samples they would like to have sequenced and analyzed. The federal funds will cover the costs of the sequencing and analysis will create a library of information that can be shared with researchers throughout the country. In return for their proposing projects and providing samples, outside researchers will have access to the genomic information IGS scientists discover.
The program is also designed to enable IGS and other research centers to respond rapidly and readily within a matter of days or weeks to a bioterrorist attack or the outbreak of an infectious disease.
Writer: Walaika Haskins
Source: Claire Fraser-Liggett, Ph.D., University of Maryland School of Medicine