The National Institutes of Health has awarded four grants for up to four years to multidisciplinary research teams to explore the use of genome sequencing in medical care. The awards total approximately $6.7 million in the first year and, if funding remains available, approximately $27 million in total. The new grants are funded as part of the National Human Genome Research Institute’s (NHGRI) Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research (CSER) program. They expand on the initial CSER program awards given to six research teams in December 2011. (NHGRI is part of NIH.)
The areas of research being pursued by these new projects include using genome sequencing to inform couples about reproductive risks, determining the genetic causes of childhood developmental delays and communicating findings to parents, and detecting genomic alterations that can lead to cancer.
“Since the first round of CSER program awards were announced in 2011, the use of clinical genome sequencing has seen tremendous growth,” says Bradley Ozenberger, PhD, CSER program director and deputy director of the Division of Genomic Medicine at NHGRI. “Genome sequencing has vast potential to uncover new targets for therapy. We’re continuing to learn how best to use genome sequence data to understand disease susceptibility and causation and to advance treatment.” Read about the grant awardees and learn more.
