MolPAGE Consortium Aims to Find Biomarkers for Diabetes, Vascular Disease

NEW YORK, April 15 (GenomeWeb News) - A European consortium of 18 academic institutions, biotechnology companies, and pharmaceutical firms has been funded by €12 million ($15.5 million) from the European Union to identify biomarkers for diabetes and vascular disease.

The consortium, called the Molecular Phenotyping to Accelerate Genomic Epidemiology Consortium, or MolPAGE, is led by Mark McCarthy and John Bell at OxfordUniversity. 

The diabetes research program aims to use genomic, proteomic, and metabonomic technologies to identify biomarkers that are able to highlight individuals likely to suffer from diabetes and vascular disease  before they show any of the symptoms, biochemical abnormalities, or other features typically used in the diagnosis of these conditions.

"Whilst the use of well-established parameters like blood glucose, cholesterol, and lipids for the diagnosis of diabetes is extremely valuable, the recent advent of gene-regulating drugs for the treatment of diabetes has highlighted the need for a deeper molecular understanding of its causes," said Bell.

"Using new technologies to study and characterize cohorts of patients offers the potential to identify biomarkers that predict the disease, determine risk, and relate to disease activity as well as response to therapy."

MolPAGE consortium members include: the University of Oxford, Oxford Genetic Technology, Centre National de Genotypage, Epigenomics, Biovision, Novo Nordisk, the Royal Institute of Technology, Affibody, Charles University, the European Bioinformatics Institute, the Institute of Mathematics & Computer Science of the University of Latvia, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine; the University of Pavia, Gyros, Guys and St Thomas Hospital NHS Trust, Uppsala University, and Roche.