NEW YORK, Oct. 1 (GenomeWeb News) - The Nebraska chapter of the Arthritis Foundation today donated $100,000 to the North American Rheumatoid Arthritis Consortium to help fund the Rheumatoid Arthritis Genome Project.
The chapter raised the funds through public donations and by organizing a charity walk, according to a statement.
The North American Rheumatoid Arthritis Consortium is a collaboration of autoimmunity and genetics investigators. It was established in 1997 with support from the Arthritis Foundation and National Institutes of Health.
NARAC, led by Peter Gregersen at North Shore University Hospital in New York, is in the fifth year of a multi-institutional effort to collect information and samples from 1,000 families in which two or more siblings have rheumatoid arthritis. The research is funded with $1 million from the Arthritis Foundation, and $5.5 million from NIH grants.