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NHGRI Awards RTI $5.3M to Expand PhenX Toolkit

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The RTI International has received a four-year, $5.3 million award from the National Human Genome Research Institute to expand its web-based tool for the use of phenotypic data in genomics and biomedical research.

As part of the award, RTI will update and expand the PhenX Toolkit, a web-based catalog of 339 measures of phenotypes and exposures that combines data from various studies.

In the grant abstract, RTI said that the goals of the research are to "address four new research domains, to implement a rolling review and update of the 21 research domains, to integrate Chinese and Spanish translations of Toolkit protocols, to expand into social media, to build on our collaboration with the database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP), and to make PhenX measures visible in all completed studies deposited in dbGaP.

"We will also foster collaborations with related measures efforts (e.g., the Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System [PROMIS] and the National Institutes of Health [NIH] Toolbox), highlighting the complementary nature of these approaches and identifying synergies," RTI said.

RTI developed PhenX with a $6.8 million grant from NHGRI in 2007. The institute then expanded the tool kit in 2011.

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