Daily Archives: April 3, 2013

(Charles Dharapak/AP)

Every dollar we spent to map the human genome has returned $140 to our economy -- $1 of investment, $140 in return.

--President Obama, Remarks by the President on the BRAIN Initiative and American Innovation, April 2, 2013

Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy.

--Obama, 2013 State of the Union address, Feb. 12, 2013

In announcing a new government initiative to map the brain Tuesday, President Obama repeated a statistic he had used in the State of the Union addressone that we had been meaning to examine more closely.

Certainly, the presidents broader point is correctfederal government investment in research is often an important factor in innovations and scientific achievements that have enhanced Americans lives. But 140 times return on investment? That sounded a bit too good to be true.

Lets dig deeper into the data.

The Facts

The presidents factoidwhich he has asserted without citing a sourcecomes from a 2011 study by the Battelle Memorial Institute titled Economic Impact of the Human Genome Project: How a $3.8 billion investment drove $796 billion in economic impact, created 310,000 jobs and launched a genomic revolution.

Read more from the original source:
A 1 to 140 ‘return’ from the Human Genome Project?

Public release date: 2-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Steve Yozwiak syozwiak@tgen.org 602-343-8704 The Translational Genomics Research Institute

KYOTO, Japan April 2, 2013 The scientific benefits of whole genome sequencing at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) will be presented at the 14th International Myeloma Workshop, April 3-7 at the Kyoto International Conference Center.

Dr. Jonathan Keats, head of TGen's Multiple Myeloma Research Laboratory, will present Discovering the Underlying Genetics of Multiple Myeloma Through Whole Genome Sequencing at 8:15 a.m. (Kyoto time) April 4, following the conference opening talk.

Multiple myeloma is a pathological description of a disease characterized by the accumulation of plasma cells in the bone marrow. Dr. Keats' lab at TGen is focused on using new methods to investigate the genomic features of this disease with the goal of identifying genetic events that drive the development, progression, and mediate therapeutic resistance.

"We will show for the first time the integration of DNA and RNA sequencing in multiple myeloma, and how TGen's comprehensive approach to this research has begun to uncover possible genetic changes that could lead to the underlying causes of this cancer," Dr. Keats said.

Previous studies have identified as many as 10 distinct biological subgroups of multiple myeloma, highlighting the need to identify distinct genetic defects to address each subtype of this disease.

Recent advances in next generation sequencing can now identify nearly all genetics events existing in an individual tumor. Initial studies have focused on whole genome sequencing or exome sequencing and confirmed genetic mutations (TP53, NRAS, KRAS) as well as identified novel mutations (FAM46C and DIS3). In addition, identification of recurrent BRAF mutations and the availability of targeted BRAF inhibitors provide an opportunity to translate research findings into clinical practice to benefit patients.

Dr. Keats is one of the key researchers in TGen's Multiple Myeloma Genomics Initiative, funded by the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation.

"We will present results from the multiple myeloma genomics initiative using paired whole genome and transcriptome sequencing on 84 patient samples and 68 cell lines. The combination of DNA and RNA based sequencing approaches has improved our ability to identify biologically relevant alterations within each sample," Dr. Keats said.

See original here:
TGen professor discusses benefits of whole genome sequencing in study of multiple myeloma