Pharmacogenetics Research Network and Knowledge Base

The summary for the Pharmacogenetics Research Network and Knowledge Base grant is detailed below. This summary states who is eligible for the grant, how much grant money will be awarded, current and past deadlines, Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) numbers, and a sampling of similar government grants. Verify the accuracy of the data FederalGrants.com provides by visiting the webpage noted in the Link to Full Announcement section or by contacting the appropriate person listed as the Grant Announcement Contact. If any section is incomplete, please visit the website for the National Institutes of Health, which is the U.S. government agency offering this grant.

Pharmacogenetics Research Network and Knowledge Base: The purpose of this RFA is to solicit applications for an open re- competition of the Pharmacogenetics Research Network and Knowledge Base (http://www.nigms.nih.gov/pharmacogenetics). This is a network of multidisciplinary, collaborative groups of investigators that contribute their data to the publicly available knowledge base PharmGKB, which is an open research tool accessible to all scientists. The research groups in the network have interests across a range of biological processes: drug metabolism, small molecule transport, target receptors, and biological pathways involved in the drug treatment of cardiovascular diseases, asthma, cancer, and depression; other areas are welcome consistent with the interests of the funding institutes. The groups are collecting comprehensive, integrative information about specific proteins and gene families important to the field of pharmacogenetics. Some groups are using a genotype-to- phenotype approach starting with the detection of all possible variants, while other groups are employing a phenotype-to-genotype approach beginning with well-characterized clinical samples. All investigations are converging on the association of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and haplotypes with drug responses. The results are confirmed by studies of the mechanistic and clinical consequences of the molecular changes. The database groups in the network are working towards the goal of creating a centralized public knowledge base. PharmGKB (http://www.pharmgkb.org) is designed to categorize four types of phenotype information -- functional assays, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and clinical outcomes -- correlated with genotype information. The knowledge base uses standardized drug, disease, and genetic vocabularies and is linked to existing databases. The plans are to continue funding this network as a series of cooperative groups conducting studies to address a wide variety of common research problems in pharmacogenetics. This initiative will further emphasize development of the PharmGKB knowledge base; it is envisioned as an information resource that will be useful to the entire pharmacogenetics research community to enable future hypothesis-driven research. This competition is open to both new and renewal research and database groups.