NIH awards $73m to continue building resource of genes and genomic variants for precision medicine
Funding will help expand the scale of the ClinGen resource.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will renew three awards totaling $73.2 million over five years to continue building the Clinical Genome (ClinGen) resource, an effort to collect and archive information about clinically relevant genes and genomic variants for use in precision medicine.
The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) will provide the majority of the funding for the awards. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) will provide co-funding to support ClinGen’s cancer-related activities.
The use of genome sequencing in medical research and clinical practice has become more common in recent years, but the field has been limited by the lack of organized availability of information about which genes and genomic variants are relevant to human disease.
NHGRI established the ClinGen consortium in 2013 to fill that gap. The consortium works to identify which genes are associated with disease and which variants in those genes are disease-causing. Then, they work to standardize the way researchers document and share information about those variants.
“The ClinGen consortium aimed to create the tool that both researchers and medical professionals were missing to understand which genes and genomic variants are truly contributing to disease,” says Erin Ramos, Ph.D., M.P.H., deputy director of the Division of Genomic Medicine at NHGRI. “We’re proud of the resource we’ve created, including the participation of more than 1,750 disease experts from more than 40 countries, and its impact so far on genomics research and medicine.”
To date, the ClinGen consortium has organized more than 60 expert panels, which have collected and archived the clinical impact of thousands of genes and genomic variants. During the next phase, new panels will be established in response to a funding opportunity issued by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in partnership with the National Eye Institute, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the NCI. These new panels will use ClinGen frameworks to evaluate the clinical relevance of genes and genomic variants associated with diseases or conditions that are considered high priority to NIH.
The ClinGen consortium aimed to create the tool that both researchers and medical professionals were missing to understand which genes and genomic variants are truly contributing to disease. We’re proud of the resource we’ve created, including the participation of more than 1,750 disease experts from more than 40 countries, and its impact so far on genomics research and medicine.
The consortium has also published both technical standards on how to interpret and report genomic variant information and guidelines for studies that evaluate polygenic risk scores. Researchers have used these ClinGen resources to improve the effectiveness, transparency and validity of their clinical genomics research.
The awardees for this renewal period will aggregate evidence, collect expert knowledge, disseminate results to the research community and evaluate the impact of clinically relevant genes. The consortium will also strive to create a diverse, equitable, and inclusive research environment for both the genomics workforce and the ClinGen tools and products. At the beginning of the renewal period, ClinGen will create a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Action Plan to highlight its commitment to achieve these goals.
“In the renewal period, the consortium will continue to engage patients, researchers and medical professionals to increase the reach of ClinGen as well as the diversity of the patient and population data used for identifying clinically relevant genes,” says Joannella Morales, Ph.D., a program director in the Division of Genomic Medicine at NHGRI.
The awarded study sites will share these responsibilities and build upon their previous work with the ClinGen consortium:
- Heidi Rehm, Ph.D.
Broad Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts
- Christa Martin, Ph.D., FACMG and Erin R. Riggs, M.S., CGC
Geisinger, Danville, Pennsylvania
- Jonathan Berg, M.D., Ph.D.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
- Sharon Plon, M.D., Ph.D., and Aleks Milosavljevic, Ph.D.
Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas
- Teri Klein, Ph.D.
Stanford University, Stanford, California
About NHGRI, NCI and NIH
The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) is one of the 27 institutes and centers at the NIH, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. The NHGRI Division of Intramural Research develops and implements technology to understand, diagnose and treat genomic and genetic diseases. Additional information about NHGRI can be found at: www.genome.gov.
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) leads the National Cancer Program and NIH’s efforts to dramatically reduce the prevalence of cancer and improve the lives of cancer patients and their families, through research into prevention and cancer biology, the development of new interventions, and the training and mentoring of new researchers. For more information about cancer, please visit the NCI website at cancer.gov or call NCI’s contact center, the Cancer Information Service, at 1-800-4-CANCER (1-800-422-6237).
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 institutes and centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
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Last updated: September 22, 2021