CARDIOVASCULAR FUNTIONAL GENOMICS

This project is a £5.4 million collaborative programme funded by the Wellcome Trust Functional Genomics Development Initiative.

High blood pressure affects 25% of adults in western societies and is the major cause of heart attacks, strokes and kidney failure. It is genetically determined and elucidation of the causative genes and biological mechanisms responsible for high blood pressure will have a profound bearing on new methods of detection, prevention and treatment of common diseases of the heart and blood vessels.

This proposal is a collaboration between 5 large research groupings with major expertise in linking gene to function in the context of heart disease. We plan to use our unique experimental models to help to dissect genes responsible for the same disease patterns in humans. We shall utilise state of the art and beyond methods including studies on gene expression and the use of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to discover genes and pathways responsible for disease processes. Our plan includes a systematic and novel combination of studies in rodent models of cardiovascular disease, which will then inform studies in large groups of patients with disease and normal subjects to discover new robust candidate genes responsible for high blood pressure and its complications. This Consortium will make UK research internationally competitive in cardiovascular functional genomics.
The project partner Universities are:

Institution

Contacts

Glasgow

Anna Dominiczak (ad7e@clinmed.gla.ac.uk)
John Connell (JMCC1M@clinmed.gla.ac.uk)
David Gilbert (bioinformatics) (drg@dcs.gla.ac.uk) Malcolm Atkinson (bioinformatics) (mpa@dcs.gla.ac.uk)
Ela Hunt (bioinformatics) (ela@dcs.gla.ac.uk)

Leicester

Nilesh Samani (njs@le.ac.uk)
Richard Trembath (rtrembat@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk)
Paul Burton (paulb@genepi.fsnet.co.uk)

Edinburgh

John Mullins (j.mullins@ed.ac.uk)
Ian Wilmut (ian.wilmut@bbsrc.ac.uk)
Jonathon Seckl (J.Seckl@ed.ac.uk)

Imperial/MRC Clinical Sciences Centre

Timothy Aitman (t.aitman@csc.mrc.ac.uk)
James Scott (j.scott@ic.ac.uk)
Helen Causton (helen.causton@csc.mrc.ac.uk)

Oxford

Dominique Gauguier (gdomi@well.ox.ac.uk)
Hugh Watkins (Hugh.Watkins@cardiov.ox.ac.uk)

Maastricht

Henry Struijker Boudier (H.StruijkerBoudier@Farmaco.UNIMAAS.NL)

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