The proposed program is a new K12 application entitled """"""""Translational Genetics and Genomics of Airways Diseases"""""""". The program will draw on the collective experience and training accrued over the past 30 years by senior faculty at the Channing Laboratory, Brigham and Women's Hospital in collaboration with the Biostatistics Department of the Harvard School of Public Health and the Children's Hospital Informatics Group. Dr. Scott T. Weiss, Professor of Medicine and Director of Respiratory, Environmental, and Genetic Epidemiology at the Channing Laboratory, will direct the program. The overall goal of this program is ambitious: namely, to train clinical pulmonologists in the quantitative and molecular research techniques of human genetics and genomics and have the trainees apply that training in a translational way to help patients and cure airway disease via independent NIH funding. The primary research focus for this training will be on asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) genetics and genomics, although other related genetic research concerns are being addressed as well (e.g., the genetics and genomics of lung development and the role of early life epigenetic and genetic events in adult lung disease) as they relate to this overall airway disease focus. The program draws its strength from three important sources: (1) A rich environment for research, namely the Channing Laboratory, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard School of Public Health; (2) A long standing, T32 training program from which half of the faculty has graduated. This training program has been unusually successful, having trained more than 100 full-time faculty, including three members of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and six individuals who chair departments across the U.S. and Canada over the past 30 years, and finally, (3) Successful participation in the Program in Genomic Applications of NHLBI as one of only three groups of lung related investigators who were in the first wave of teaching genetics and genomics to peers and trainees. In addition to these three primary sources of support the program is supported by an extensive infrastructure to do human genetics and genomics which includes a state of the art computer system, a high throughput genotyping and sequencing laboratory and a state of the art LIMS system that manages over 100,000 DMA samples from 58 separate genetic and genomic projects conducted at 123 locations around the US and the world. Finally, there are a total of 54 grants involving 10.5 million in direct cost dollars yearly that fuel this research and training effort. The research group has collaboratively produced a total of 124 publications in genetics and genomics over the past 6 years. We have successfully taken 10/10 (100%) of our T-32 trainees in Genetics to successful K funding or its equivalent, and 6/6 (100%) of those eligible, to successful R01 funding in the past 10 years. ? ? (End of Abstract) ? ? ?
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