Bio Saga Blog - A Chronicle of Life Sciences & Informatics

The National Institutes of Health has pledged $45 million in grants to establish two new genomics centers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), as well as to continue funding existing centers at Johns Hopkins University and at the University of Southern California. The two new Centers of Excellence in Genomic Science at UNC and MCW will pursue genomics studies of mental health and gene regulation , respectively. Under the new grants, MCW will receive around $8 million over three years and UNC will reap around $8.6 million over five years from the National Human Genome Research Institute and the National Institute of Mental Health. Johns Hopkins' genomics center will receive around $16.8 million over five years to continue epigenetics of disease studies and USC will use around $12 million over the same period to conduct computational and informatics-based research of genetic variation and disease . "Our aim is to ...

Mutations in the protein tyrosine kinase gene ERBB4 contribute to — and may provide hints about treating — a subset of melanoma, according to a paper by researchers from the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins University that appeared in the advanced, online edition of Nature Genetics this week. The team sequenced protein tyrosine kinase or PTK genes in 29 individuals with melanoma. Their search uncovered dozens of somatic mutations affecting the kinase domain of 19 different PTK genes. When they looked at the same 19 genes in another 79 melanoma patients, the researchers found that almost a fifth of those tested harbored mutations in ERBB4 . And, they reported, knocking down the mutated form of ERBB4 or using a drug that targeted the gene slowed the growth of melanoma cell lines, suggesting it might be useful to evaluate ERBB4 status in melanoma patients. Researchers at the NIH Intramural Sequencing Center sequenced all 86 PTK family genes in tumor samples from 29 ...