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NEW COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY CENTER AIMS TO ADVANCE NEXT GENERATION OF
GENOMICS, PROTEOMICS RESEARCH
NIH Grant Will Establish Nation’s Biomedical Computing Infrastructure
Center Will Collaborate with C2B², Columbia’s Analytical Core
New York, NY (Sept. 30, 2005) –
Addressing the critical need for new ways to analyze the enormous
amounts of data being generated by genomics and proteomics, Columbia
University is establishing a National Center for Biomedical Computing
with an $18.5 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of
Health.
Columbia’s new center – the National Center for Multi-Scale Analysis of
Genetic and Cellular Networks (MAGNet) – is part of a network of seven
centers created by the NIH to begin developing the computational and
scientific infrastructure as well as software and data management tools
needed to leverage the vast core data generated in part by the Human
Genome Project.
This grant is part of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research. Of
$235 million in grants for new and continuing Roadmap projects in 2005,
Columbia has been awarded a combined total of nearly $50 million.
Earlier this summer, Columbia received $25 million from the Protein
Structure Initiative, another component of the NIH Roadmap. In
June $9 million was awarded to James Rothman, Ph.D., director of the
Judith P. Sulzberger, M.D. Columbia Genome Center and the Clyde and
Helen Wu Professor of Physiology, for his work with the Molecular
Libraries Screening Centers Network of the NIH Roadmap.
“These NIH Roadmap grants establish Columbia as one of the nation’s
major centers for computational biology and bioinformatics,” said David
Hirsh, Ph.D., executive vice president for research at Columbia
University. “Biomedical research is moving away from small
experiments on individual genes or proteins, to the simultaneous
analysis of tens of thousands of genes and proteins and entire systems
inside cells.”
Computational Biology: New Tools for Rapid, High-Volume Data Assessment
“Computational biology, a new field of science, has the potential to
revolutionize biology and the translation of biology into medicine,”
said MAGNet Director Andrea Califano, Ph.D., professor of biomedical
informatics at Columbia University Medical Center. “The goal of
the National Centers for Biomedical Computing is to make it easier for
the wider scientific community to exploit the power of computers to
address fundamental biological and biomedical challenges.”
Among the seven centers, MAGNet has the unique goal of creating
computational methods and tools to help solve one of the biggest
challenges in biology: understanding how all the genes and proteins
inside cells work together to implement specific biological processes.
Better Understanding of Molecular Interactions In Disease
“With approximately 20,000 genes in the human genome, there are
trillions of possible interactions among genes and proteins within a
cell. Exploring each one in the laboratory would take a very long
time, even with current high throughput methods,” said Dr. Califano.
“Instead, we plan to use computers and new methods of systems biology
to predict which proteins are interacting with each other and with DNA,
and how these interactions change in disease. Eventually, this will
have a major impact on how we understand a variety of human diseases,
including cancer.”
C2B²
MAGNet will be housed on the Columbia University Medical Center campus
in the newly established Center for Computational Biology and
Bioinformatics (C2B²). C2B²researchers play a central role in MAGnet, as well as the Protein Structure Initiative of NIH Roadmap.
“I expect that a close synergy will evolve between the computational
tools being developed in MAGnet and the analysis of the
three-dimensional structure of the proteins that will be determined in
the context of the Protein Structure Initiative, since C2B² researchers will be engaged in both activities,” said C2B²
Director and MAGNet co-Director Barry Honig, Ph.D., Investigator of the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute and professor of biochemistry and
molecular biophysics at the Columbia University Medical Center.
“We also hope that C2B² will enhance Columbia’s leadership position in this important new scientific area.”
C2B² is an interdepartmental center which works
towards catalyzing research between biology and the computational and
physical sciences. It supports active research programs in areas
such as computational biophysics and structural biology, the modeling
of regulatory, signaling and metabolic networks, pattern recognition,
machine learning, and functional genomics. The Center also
sponsors a seminar program, as well as access to a range of software
tools.
C2B² is located at Columbia University Medical
Center, but faculty members are based on both the Medical Center and
Morningside Campuses of Columbia University. Center faculty have
appointments in a broad range of departments including Biochemistry and
Molecular Biophysics, Biomedical Informatics, Biological Sciences,
Chemistry, Computer Science, Center for Computational Learning Systems,
Applied Mathematics and Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering.
C2B² and MAGNet capitalize on significant
investments made by AMDeC, a not-for-profit consortium of thirty-five
New York medical schools, academic health centers, and research
institutions, to build bioinformatics resources for New York State
researchers. AMDeC’s Bioinformatics Core is housed within C2B².
MAGnet also leverages the interactions with two other AMDeC
initiatives, the Microarray Research Center and the New York Cancer
Project.
Additional information about the C2B² and MAGNet Centers can be respectively found at www.c2b2.columbia.edu and at magnet.c2b2.columbia.edu.
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Columbia University
was founded in 1754 as King's College by royal charter of King George
II of England. It is the oldest institution of higher learning in the
state of New York and the fifth oldest in the United States.
Columbia University Medical Center provides
international leadership in basic, pre-clinical and clinical research,
in medical and health sciences education, and in patient care. The
medical center trains future leaders in health care and includes the
dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, nurses, dentists, and
public health professionals at the College of Physicians &
Surgeons, the School of Dental & Oral Surgery, the School of
Nursing, the Mailman School of Public Health, the biomedical
departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied
research centers and institutions. Columbia University Medical
Center researchers are leading the discovery of novel therapies and
advances to address a wide range of health conditions.
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