Genes and environment are focus of two new NIH initiatives

Genes and environment are focus of two new NIH initiatives

At the beginning of February the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced two major initiatives aimed at the convergence of genes, environmental factors, and chronic disease. The Genes and Environment Initiative (GEI) is a multi-institute effort combining genetic analysis and environmental technology to understand the causes of common diseases. The Genetic Association Information Network (GAIN) is a joint effort of the NIH, the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, Pfizer, and Affymetrix aimed at accelerating genome association studies.

The Genes and Environment Initiative will cost $28 million in FY 2006, increasing to $40 million in FY 2007, according to the President's budget request. The $40 million for GEI in FY 2007 would be split between two efforts: $26 million for genotyping studies and $14 million for development of new tools to measure environmental exposures that affect health. National Human Genome Research Institute Director Francis Collins, MD/PhD, and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Director David Schwartz, MD will oversee GEI.

Researchers interested in genotyping common diseases will be invited to apply for GEI funding. A peer review committee will select the most appropriate diseases. Each genotyping study will cost on average $3 million-$6 million and involve 1000-2000 patients with a specific disease plus a similar number of disease-free control subjects. Using new technology to analyze single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, researchers will identify genes that contribute to an increased risk of illness.

With the $14 million annual investment in the environmental component of this initiative, NIH will develop measures of dietary intake, personalized measures of physical activity, and biological measures that identify prior exposures to potential toxins.

The Genetic Association Information Network is a public-private partnership to support new research efforts and develop a free, public database about the genetic causes of common illnesses. It has been launched with $20 million from Pfizer and financial contributions from Affymetrix.

The National Library of Medicine will manage the database, which will contain genetic data from thousands of patients with particular diseases with identifiers removed. The publishing priority of researchers who put data in the repository will be protected. Users of the database will have to wait 9 months before publishing papers based on data that they did not deposit themselves.

The database will allow researchers to analyze the DNA of ill and healthy people to explore whether the sick individuals have genes in common. The NIH will also fund research to study how genes and environmental causes, like pollutants, combine to cause disease.

GAIN will build on two previous NIH initiatives—the Human Genome Project, (http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/home.shtml), completed in 2003, which mapped the location of human genes on chromosomes, and the International HapMap Project, (http://www.hapmap.org/), finished in 2005, which charted genetic variations across different human populations.

The research will initially focus on seven illnesses and health conditions that will be determined based on a peer review of research proposals. Possible disease candidates include arthritis, asthma, cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer's disease.

Source: NIH Press Release, http://www.niehs.nih.gov/oc/news/gei.htm