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CCTS Director Dr. Robert Kimberly made comments in the recent article on The Mix research blog, discussing immunogenomics and epigenetics. He was in attendance at the 2014 HudsonAlpha Immunogenomics Conference, which took place at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology campus in Huntsville, Alabama.
From the Blog:
Researchers are also focusing increasing attention on the ways gene expression is regulated dynamically in cells through epigenetic changes, says Robert P. Kimberly, M.D., director of the UAB Center for Clinical and Translational Science. Epigenetics refers to mechanisms that alter gene expression without changes in the actual DNA sequence. One of the most common epigenetic changes is methylation. When a methyl group attaches to the DNA base cytosine, it blocks the ability of the neighboring gene to be expressed. Tracking and analyzing epigenetic markers implicated in a particular disease — such as systemic lupus erythematosus, one of Kimberly’s own research interests — could give clinicians crucial information on “if to treat, when to treat and also how to treat” that condition, he said. . . . Team-based ScienceCollaborations between investigators at HudsonAlpha and UAB have taken place since the institute first opened in 2008, Kimberly says. But the new UAB–HudsonAlpha Center for Genomic Medicine, launched this summer, will increase these research partnerships and speed new discoveries in immunology, cancer, cardiovascular disease and many other fields, he notes. Leveraging the strengths of each institution is critical as the scale of the research challenges becomes ever greater, Kimberly adds. “To understand what’s really happening in disease states, we’re going to have to be able to take all the data on genomics, epigenetics and more and figure out how to pull it all together,” he said. That’s why UAB is also creating a new Informatics Institute. It will work in tandem with the UAB–HudsonAlpha Center for Genomic Medicine and a third initiative, the UAB Personalized Medicine Institute, to build the infrastructure and recruit the data scientists needed to succeed in this new era of research. “It’s a major frontier right now,” Kimberly said. “The algorithms to combine all this data for the most part haven’t even been formulated yet. But it’s clear that the institutions that succeed in the future will be the innovators in this area.” |