Contact: Mary Prescott 1-312-397-6604
Jeanne Corrigan 1-312-397-6610 [email protected]
CONSORTIUM OF PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES AND THE WELLCOME TRUST FUND CREATION OF PUBLIC DATABASE OF GENE MARKERS
- Leading Academic Centers Collaborate in "SNP" Mapping -
- Improved Understanding of Biological Basis of Disease Expected To Lead to More and Better Treatments -
London and New York (April 15) - A powerful new tool to enhance understanding of disease processes and facilitate discovery, development and delivery of safer and more effective medications is the promise of an innovative collaboration among the pharmaceutical industry, the world's largest medical research charity, and several leading academic centers.
Announced today, the two-year, $45 million initiative to create a high-quality map of genetic markers is being funded by the Wellcome Trust and ten pharmaceutical companies: AstraZeneca PLC, Bayer AG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Glaxo Wellcome PLC, Hoechst Marion Roussel AG, Novartis, Pfizer Inc, Searle, and SmithKline Beecham PLC.
Leading academic centers, including the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the Wellcome Trust's Sanger Centre, Stanford Human Genome Center, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, will participate in the identification and analysis of the genetic markers known as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs (pronounced "snips").
This collaborative effort, called The SNP Consortium, is organized as a non-profit entity. Governed by a board composed of representatives of the member organizations and led by an independent chairman, the consortium participants provide oversight and technical expertise to the scientific plan, and direct the effort to ensure public availability of SNPs that are generated.
As it is constructed, the SNP map will be placed in the public domain, giving free and equal access to all in the worldwide medical research community. The map is expected to be useful in:
-- identifying specific genes involved in both common and rare diseases, thereby facilitating the discovery of new ways and new medicines to intervene in the disease process,
-- developing novel diagnostic tests, and
-- creating new "personalized" medicines, based on an understanding of minute genetic variations that predict response to therapy.
SNPs are common variations that occur in human DNA, and which scientists believe can help pinpoint the subtle genetic differences that predispose some but not others to diseases such as arthritis, Alzheimer's, cancer, diabetes, and depression, and underlie variability in individual responses to a given drug. In turn, such knowledge can be used to spur the development of new therapies that will better treat, or even prevent, illness.
"A large, high-density and high-quality SNP map will be of great utility to the medical research community, as it will help answer questions about genetic factors that contribute to disease susceptibility and response to treatment, and suggest directions for future investigation," says Arthur Holden, chairman and chief executive officer of The SNP Consortium. "The members of the consortium believe that free and unrestricted access to this powerful tool will benefit scientific inquiry in industry, government, academic, and independent laboratories."
Through the collaboration, it is expected that a high-density, high-quality map will be created more quickly, and with shared financial risk and less duplication of effort than if each company pursued development of a SNP map on its own. Once created, the map will provide important direction for industry scientists searching for new ways for medicines to cure and prevent disease, and for medicines that more precisely target specific patient groups.
Moreover, the availability of the map to academic, government, and independent medical researchers worldwide should enable investigation of genes associated with rare diseases, which otherwise might not be feasible because of the significant investment that would be required.
The value of SNPs resides in their simplicity, frequency, and distribution throughout the human genome (the full set of genetic instructions, encoded in long strands of DNA). There are roughly 3 billion nucleotide pairs (the "building blocks" of DNA, also called "base pairs") in the human genome, 99.9 percent of which are the same for everyone. It is the remaining 0.1 percent that accounts for differences between people. A variation in a single base - that is, a SNP - is estimated to occur every 1000 bases.
The SNP Consortium intends to identify up to 300,000 and map at least 150,000 SNPs that can then be used in association studies. That is, SNP patterns from a target population - such as patients who suffer from a particular disease or who respond poorly to a particular drug - can be compared with SNP patterns from unaffected populations to find genetic variations shared only by the affected group. It is from these association studies that disease-specific genes may be identified, and from which novel therapeutic avenues and even tailor-made therapies are expected to evolve.
Using DNA from a diversified, representative panel of anonymous volunteers, sequence information from the publicly-funded Human Genome Project, and advanced sequencing and mapping technologies, the Whitehead Institute, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the Wellcome Trust's Sanger Centre, and Stanford Human Genome Center will identify and map SNPs. The bioinformatics program at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory will use computerized methods to organize, analyze, and manage the resulting SNP database, as well as distribute the information contained in the database. As SNPs are identified, steps will be taken to establish the date of discovery, and to guarantee free access to the map that is developed.
"The mission of The SNP Consortium is to make widely available an important research tool that will advance our understanding of disease processes, and by extension, the field of human medicine," Mr. Holden says. "We believe our efforts will be helpful to medical researchers worldwide, and will complement other public undertakings such as those spearheaded by the National Human Genome Research Institute, the Wellcome Trust, and the Medical Research Council's Human Genome Mapping Project, as well as the many private initiatives currently underway. The knowledge gained in the next several years has the potential to change fundamentally the practice of medicine."
# # #
RSS