NIH Awards Nearly $5 Million to Fund Knockout
Mouse Repository
Increased Availability of Genetically Altered
Mice Will Aid Studies of Human Diseases
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced today it will
provide $4.8 million to establish and support a repository for
its Knockout Mouse Project. This award is the final component of
a more than $50 million trans-NIH initiative to increase the availability
of genetically altered mice and related materials. The University
of California, Davis (UC Davis) and Children’s Hospital Oakland
Research Institute (CHORI) in Oakland, Calif., will collaborate
to preserve, protect, and make available about 8,500 types of knockout
mice and related products available to the research community.
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“Knockout mice are useful tools that allow researchers to study
human conditions such as cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease
and then translate discoveries into cures and treatments that will
improve public health,” according to Barbara Alving, M.D., Director
of the National Center for Research Resources, the NIH component
that is leading the repository effort. “This initiative will ensure
knockout mouse strains are made available to the research community
in an economical and timely manner.”
Knockout mice are lines of mice in which specific genes have been
completely disrupted, or knocked out. Systematic disruption of
each of the 20,000 genes in the mouse genome will allow researchers
to determine the role of each gene in normal physiology and development.
More importantly, researchers can use knockout mice to develop
better models of many inherited human diseases. Recent advances
in DNA technologies, as well as completion of the mouse genome
sequence, now make this project feasible.
The repository will archive, maintain, and distribute up to 8,500
strains of embryonic stem cell clones, live mouse lines, frozen
embryos and sperm, and vectors — while assuring product quality
and availability for all materials. The four-year grant funds establishment
and operation of the repository.
“This repository will enable many more researchers to access knockout
mice, which are valuable models of human disease,” said Colin Fletcher,
Ph.D., a program director at the National Human Genome Research
Institute (NHGRI), which is the administrative lead for KOMP. “Establishing
this final component of the Knockout Mouse Project is an important
milestone in progressing toward our goal of making a comprehensive
resource of knockout mutations in the mouse genome publicly available
to the research community.”
"As veterinary scientists, we are proud of our longstanding partnership
with the NIH," said Bennie Osburn, dean of the School of Veterinary
Medicine at UC Davis. "This important project builds on our reputation
as a resource for genetically altered mice, which are essential
models for furthering our understanding of human and animal disease."
Previously funded portions of the KOMP include two awards totaling
$47.2 million for the creation of mouse embryonic stem cell lines
in which 8,500 different genes have been knocked out. Recipients
were Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and a collaborative team
from UC Davis, CHORI, and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in
England. NIH also supported the establishment of a data coordination
center by the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, to track
the scheduling and progress of knockout production. In addition,
NIH issued smaller awards to the University of Pennsylvania and
the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital
in Toronto to improve the efficiency of methods for creating knockout
lines.
The repository project is being funded by NCRR, NHGRI, and the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In addition
to those three NIH components, the overall Knockout Mouse Project
is being supported by the National Eye Institute; National Heart,
Lung and Blood Institute; National Institute on Aging; National
Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism; National Institute of
Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases; National Institute
of Child Health and Human Development; National Institute on Deafness
and Other Communication Disorders; National Institute of Dental
and Craniofacial Research, National Institute on Drug Abuse; National
Institute of Environmental Health Sciences; National Institute
of General Medical Sciences; National Institute of Mental Health;
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; National
Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease; National
Cancer Institute; and the Office of AIDS Research.
More information about the KOMP resources is available at www.komp.org.
To request information or products, researchers can call 1-888-KOMP-MICE
or e-mail service@komp.org.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation's
Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and
Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting
and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research,
and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both
common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and
its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
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