News

ClinGen, a public genomic variant database, has been formally recognized by U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a source of "valid scientific evidence that can be used to support clinical validity." This step is significant because it certifies that ClinGen provides accurate, accessible data to researchers who are developing genetic tests to help increase understanding of the causes of disease by researchers and health care providers, with the ultimate outcome of improving patient care. According to the FDA, "ClinGen brings together more than 700 clinical and research experts to develop standard processes for reviewing data and genetic variants and their connections to health and disease. The experts who are part of the consortium determine how each variant is associated with a specific hereditary disease or condition and make that information available for unrestricted use in the community." The Principal Investigator for the ClinGen project is Heidi Rehm; she outlined the need for undertaking this work and the challenges to correctly interpreting genetic variants in a Consortium-sponsored lecture you can view here. 

Doctors at a London hospital are being sued "because they failed to tell [a woman] about her father’s fatal hereditary disease before she had her own child," according to the Guardian. "The woman discovered – after giving birth – that her father carried the gene for Huntington’s disease, a degenerative, incurable brain condition. Later she found out she had inherited the gene and that her own daughter, now eight, has a 50% chance of having it. The woman. . .  says she would have had an abortion had she known about her father’s condition, and is suing the doctors who failed to tell her about the risks she and her child faced. It is the first case in English law to deal with a relative’s claim over issues of genetic responsibility." Much of the groundwork for US legal and policy approaches to these complicated issues can be found in a symposium, "Should We Offer Genomic Research Results to a Participant's Family, Including After the Participant's Death?" edited by Consortium Chair Susan M. Wolf, Barbara A. Koenig (UCSF) and Gloria M. Petersen (Mayo Clinic). The symposium grew out of an NIH-funded grant, "Disclosing Genomic Incidental Findings in a Cancer Biobank: An ELSI Experiment," for which Wolf, Koenig and Petersen served as Principal Investigators. 

On Tuesday, Nov. 27, Oron Catts will delivery a lecture entitled "Biology on the Pedestal" at the Weisman Art Museum. Catts is the director of SymbioticA, a center dedicated to the biological arts at the University of Western Australia. He is an artist, researcher, designer and curator whose pioneering work, the Tissue Culture and Art Project, is considered a leading biological art project. Catts’ ideas and projects reach beyond the confines of art; his work is often cited as inspiration to diverse areas such as new materials, textiles, design, architecture, ethics, fiction, and food. He is recognized worldwide for creating a unique model of cross-disciplinary integration where artistic thought and hard science seamlessly blend into a single creative research process. This event is co-presented by the Weisman Art Museum, the BioTechnology Institute, a Consortium member, and the University of Minnesota Medical School; learn more and register here. 

A new study published in the journal Cell demonstrates that the American diet has nearly immediate effects on the human microbiome. The lead author of the article is Dan Knights of the University of Minnesota; as he tells the Washington Post, "We found that moving to a new country changes your microbiome. You pick up the microbiome of the new country and possibly some of the new disease risks that are more common in that country." In the case of people moving from Southeast Asia to the United States, their "gut diversity dropped to resemble the less-varied microbiomes in European Americans. At the same time, obesity rates spiked." Prof. Knights is renowned for his work using computational methods to better understand the human microbiome and develop precision medicine therapies. He was the commentator for a Consortium-sponsored lecture, "The Evolving Human Microbiome," by Alexander Khoruts, also of the University of Minnesota. Watch the video of that lecture here.