NIH Announces $260 Million Boost To Genomics Funding

The National Institutes of Health has announced it will invest $260 M over the next 4 years in genome sequencing and analysis, in an effort to unravel the influence on genetics on common diseases. 

The additional funding will fund the new Centers for Common Disease Genomics (CCDG) which aims to study how genetic differences can influence disease risk. The project aims to sequence 150,000 to 200,000 genomes in pursuit of this goal.

“These studies will reveal genomic variants that may increase the risk for—or, in some cases, protect against—diseases, which eventually might be helpful for their clinical management” 

$240 million will be split between 4 centres over the 4 year effort. $80 million will go to The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, $60 million to Washington University, another 60 to Baylor College of Medicine and $40 million to the New York Genome centre. 

A further $40 million will pass to the Centers of Mendelian Genomics in their efforts to understand the causes of Mendelian diseases (those caused by a single locus and follow a clear inheritance risk).

Read more at GenEngNews