The National Institutes of Health has awarded the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation a new grant that will enable scientists to probe the human genome.
The funding will establish a hub for studies into how genes are turned on and off and how DNA is structured and modified. Research in that center will focus on casting light on processes involved in cancer, reproduction and metabolic disorders.
OMRF’s new Center for Genomic Regulation will be funded by a five-year, $12.3 million grant through the NIH’s Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence, or COBRE, program, which helps promising junior scientists establish independent research programs.
“This grant will support the work of a group talented and emerging researchers,” said OMRF President Andy Weyrich, Ph.D. “It will provide a major scientific boost as they work to unlock biological secrets at the center of conditions ranging from cancer and diabetes to birth defects.”
This grant will fund the work of four OMRF junior scientists:
- Rafal Donczew, Ph.D., investigates gene transcription, a continual process in our cells involving the copying of DNA.
- Elizabeth Finn, Ph.D., researches how DNA is folded and condensed to fit inside the nucleus of cells.
- Jake Kirkland, Ph.D., studies how a cell determines which genes to activate or repress and why the incorrect activation or repression of genes can lead to cancer.
- Jaya Krishnan, Ph.D., focuses on how some organisms can use high glucose and excess body fat to survive long periods with little to no food.
The scientists are all new to Oklahoma, each having established a lab at OMRF in the past four years, following the completion of postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford University, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, and the National Institutes of Health.
For Kirkland, the new grant ensures the continuation of his research into a complex process called chromatin regulation, the control system for genes that determines a cell’s identity.
“This process can go wrong before we’re born, resulting in birth defects, but it can also go wrong later in life,” Kirkland said. “When a gene that’s supposed to get turned on instead gets turned off, that can be the beginning of cancer and other diseases.”
Directing the new Center for Genomic Regulation will be Bill Freeman, Ph.D., principal investigator on the grant. He said the grant illustrates how biomedical research has progressed since the completion of the Human Genome Project in the early 2000s.
“We’ve moved beyond figuring out the genetic mutations that make someone more or less likely to develop a disease,” Freeman said. “Now science is about understanding how genetic information is copied, stored and used in a cell so we can better understand the cause of diseases and potential treatments.”
With this new grant, Freeman said, “OMRF hopes to become a leader in that effort.”
This COBRE grant, No. 1P20GM156711-01, was awarded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, part of the NIH.
