The NIH Funds Genetic Studies Into Common Conditions, Personal Environmental Exp

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The NIH Funds Genetic Studies Into Common Conditions, Personal

Environmental Exposures

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has selected the first

projects to be funded as part of the Genes, Environment and Health

Initiative (GEI), a unique collaboration between geneticists and

environmental scientists.

" This is ground-breaking research in understanding the complex

factors that contribute to health and disease, " said Department of

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt. " Researchers have

long known that our genes, our environmental exposures and our own

behavioral choices all have an influence on our health. This new

initiative will use innovative genomic tools as well as new

instruments for measuring environmental factors -- from diet and

physical activity to stress and substance addiction -- in order to

begin sorting out how these different factors affect a person's risk

for a number of health conditions. "

Secretary Leavitt first launched the GEI initiative in February 2006

as a proposal in the President's budget for fiscal year 2007. The

funding announced today is for the first research grants under the

new initiative. They are part of a broader effort across HHS

agencies to build on recent advances in genomic science and

medicine, including the Secretary's Initiative on Personalized

Health Care. NIH received $40 million in new funding as part of its

fiscal year (FY) 2007 budget to support GEI. NIH institutes already

planned to spend some $28 million in FY 2007 on the kinds of studies

GEI will conduct. And finally, two institutes chose to add a total

of $9 million in additional funding for targeted studies under the

Genes, Environment and Health Initiative.

To identify the genetic risks, researchers will use the rapidly

evolving technologies used in genome-wide association studies to

focus on common conditions, such as tooth decay, heart disease,

cancer and diabetes. This genetic component of GEI uses a strategy

which relies on the newfound ability to swiftly identify genetic

differences throughout the genome between people with an illness and

those who are healthy, leading to an understanding of the underlying

genetic contribution to the disease. The environmental component

will begin by developing new technologies that accurately measure

personal exposures with small, wearable sensors that can be used to

assess environmental agents. The final component of the research

strategy is to determine whether the effect of genetic variants that

increase disease risk is different in the presence of environmental

exposures. In the first year, NIH will fund eight genome-wide

association studies, two genotyping centers, a coordinating center

and more than 30 environmental technology projects.

" Genome-wide association studies have proven themselves to be

powerful tools for discovering the genetic contributions to common

diseases, " said Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., director of the NIH, which

is part of HHS. " Early findings from such studies have identified

new genetic variants associated with a higher risk of common

diseases such as prostate cancer, diabetes and heart disease, but

researchers have only scratched the surface. The genetic studies

being funded today will identify many novel genetic variants

associated with an increased risk for these health conditions. "

The genome-wide association studies will be led by the National

Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of NIH. First-year

funding for the studies was contributed by all NIH institutes and

centers, including an extra investment by NIH's National Institute

of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR).

more at http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/81461.php