NEW YORK — The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) said last month that it has earmarked roughly $14.3 million over the next five years to fund research under its Centers for Mendelian Genomics initiative.
The agency is also seeking applications for projects focused on the development and distribution of cost-effective genomic resources for the broader research community in partnership with the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
The Centers for Mendelian Genomics were launched in 2011 to discover genes underlying human Mendelian disorders. Current members include the Baylor College of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, the Broad Institute, the University of Washington, and Yale University.
Under the latest funding opportunity, the NHGRI will provide $9 million over fiscal years 2020 to 2025 to support three to five groups that will become Centers for Mendelian Genomics and use the latest sequencing technologies to advance the initiative's mission.
"A key outcome of this program will be the development of approaches to identify the causal gene or variant for Mendelian conditions for which a candidate gene was not identified using whole-exome sequencing alone," the agency said.
The centers, the NHGRI added, will be expected to "apply new technologies or more comprehensive sequencing, and to develop novel analytical approaches or other strategies that can be used to solve these more complex cases."
Additional details can be found here.
The NHGRI also intends to provide approximately $5.3 million over fiscal years 2021 through 2025 to fund a data coordinating center for the Mendelian Genomics Research Consortium. The center will be tasked with managing the release of data and findings generated under the program and overseeing program outreach and logistics. Additional details about this funding opportunity can be found here.
Under the third funding opportunity, the NHGRI and the NCI are accepting applications for projects that provide the research community with access to existing genomic resources — such as model organism databases, ontologies for genomic features and phenotypes, and collections of DNA structural variants — as well as newly developed ones.
The agencies have not set a specific amount they will make available for this program. Additional details can be found here.