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(Circulation. 2000;101:468.)
© 2000 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorials

NHLBI Genomics Initiatives

Looking Beyond the Human Genome Project

Claude Lenfant, MD

From the Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Bethesda, Md.

Correspondence to Claude Lenfant, MD, Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Bethesda, MD 20892.

Key Words: Editorials • genomics

The US Human Genome Project has already produced a vast abundance of data, technologies, and resources. With its anticipated completion of the sequencing of human genomic DNA by the year 2003 come many exciting challenges and opportunities for the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).

With this groundwork placed before us, the next essential step is to successfully correlate these data, technologies, and resources with the physiology and pathophysiology that define health and disorders. Of the 100 000 human genes, the NHLBI is particularly concerned with the subset that is linked to heart, lung, blood, and sleep health and disorders. Our challenge is to clearly identify these genes, then to build on this knowledge to develop better methods for prevention, diagnosis, and therapy. Let me provide some examples of approaches we are taking to meet this challenge.

The NHLBI has already developed several important initiatives in gene discovery. The Family Blood Pressure Program, for instance, seeks to uncover the multiple genes and interacting factors that contribute to blood pressure regulation and dysfunction. Our asthma program has shown a linkage of asthma and its associated traits to multiple genomic regions and is now moving forward to apply positional candidate gene approaches. For sickle-cell disease, we seek to identify and characterize those genes that modulate disease severity in the hope of designing more individualized strategies to manage this devastating illness. In thrombosis, we are about to fund a new program to elucidate the molecular genetic mechanisms of thrombosis in the arterial . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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