Spring 2001

Exploring The Human Frontier

Supported by a $105 million gift from Lilly Endowment, IUSM scientists will further our understanding of human genetics through the Indiana Genomics Initiative.

Imagine peering into a bowl of alphabet soup. Not your average-sized bowl with its barley flotilla of A's through Z's drifting haphazardly across a pond of watery tomato sauce, occasionally forming a simple word. Instead, the bowl you're staring into reveals a microscopic world as large and mysterious as any extraterrestrial galaxy. This teeming protoplasmic soup is made of billions of ingredients and has just four letters - G, A, T and C - which regularly arrange themselves into a language of stunning complexity. This amazing alphabet soup contains the vocabulary of the human genome.

It is a galaxy IUSM scientists will explore with vigor thanks to a $105 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., the largest single grant ever received by the University and the largest gift ever awarded by the Indianapolis-based endowment.

"Physicians and researchers involved in the Indiana Genomics Initiative (INGEN) will collaborate to discover the meanings of those words that make up the human genome," says IUSM Dean D. Craig Brater, MD, primary architect of the proposal made to the Lilly Endowment. "They are the keys for better patient care. We strongly believe that this will bring us to the day we will be able to treat a cancer patient with a therapy that destroys only cancer cells, leaving healthy tissue unharmed. Perhaps it will lead to a remedy or halt the spread of Alzheimer or Parkinson disease at the time they are diagnosed."

Collaboration and commitment is what the initiative is all about, affirms Indiana University's chief officer, President Myles Brand, PhD: "The project will illustrate on a grand scale the truth that IU's excellence is a public resource. That means we not only have an obligation to educate the state's citizens but to improve their quality of life and help create a 21st-century Hoosier economy. INGEN will enable us to do that in new and exciting ways."

Since the Human Genome Project, initiated by the United States in 1989, announced in mid-2000 that it had completed the working draft of the human genome, scientists at institutions throughout the world have stepped up their research to make sense of these estimated three billion bits of human genomic information.

The Indiana Genomics Initiative will create a world-class biomedical enterprise, building on existing resources at the IU School of Medicine. The School currently holds $130 million in research funding, which includes funds for the only federally sponsored gene vector production and research facility, for one of three molecular hematology research centers in the country, and for a National Cancer Institute-designated cancer research center.

Strategic Attraction
"Lilly Endowment was immediately attracted to this initiative because it builds strategically on Indiana University's recognized strengths in informatics and supercomputing, supported in part by the endowment-funded Indiana Pervasive Computing Research Initiative," says Lilly Endowment President N. Clay Robbins. "The potential for the results of this grant to attract a stellar array of intellectual talent and expertise to Indiana, along with attendant employment opportunities, is especially exciting."

Lilly Endowment, Robbins notes, also is "greatly impressed" by the commitment of IU as a part of this initiative to develop a major center for the study of bioethics, especially relating to genomics research. In fact, IU has taken the first step to ensure the integrity of that mission with the recent appointment of Eric Meslin, PhD, as the director of its Center for Bioethics.

"Bioethics is a critical component of our initiative," says Ora H. Pescovitz, MD, IUSM's executive associate dean of research. "The bioethics program will examine the ethical, legal and social issues that arise from genomics research in tandem with the scientific programs. It is essential that a world-class genomics effort be accompanied by an equally outstanding bioethics program."

In addition to bioethics, the other key components of the initiative are genomics, bioinformatics, education, medical informatics and training for working scientists.

Within three years, IU will hire approximately seventy-five additional MD, PhD, MD/PhD and master's degree-level scientists and will be positioned to attract exceptional scholars interested in genomics. The initiative will have a similar impact on student recruitment in information technology and other fields associated with the initiative at IU.

"All of our expectations of future health care depend on a whole new way of treating disease and on physicians and scientists who will develop those treatments. This means working from a genomic-based knowledge base," says Dr. Brater. "Since more than half of the physicians treating citizens in Indiana are educated at the IU School of Medicine, it is vital that we provide them with the best education and training in the country."

World-Class Infrastructure
INGEN will build on IU's investments in research and academic computing resources - including an expansion of its supercomputer system - and the University's links to the Internet2 and other high speed computing networks.

"Information technology is essential to scientific progress in genomic research," says Michael A. McRobbie, PhD, IU vice president for information technology and chief information officer, who will be responsible for further development of the information technology infrastructure for the initiative. "The genomics initiative will take advantage of IU's world-class information technology infrastructure including supercomputers, facilities for storing massive amounts of computer data, as well as 3-D visualization laboratories."

IU anticipates it will team up with other universities and private industry as INGEN progresses. The IU Advanced Research and Technology Institute, known as ARTI, will support economic development and promote commercialization of scientific discoveries through a technology transfer assistance program. It will include access to seed and venture capital, work-force enhancement, creation of biomedical companies and licensing to commercial partners.

The grant received from Lilly Endowment, none of which will be used for the construction of new buildings, is for three years. In the first year, INGEN will recruit and hire clinical research coordinators, data managers, lab technicians and a secretary. Also, it will establish an education and training program for research coordinators, develop clinical protocols, and obtain and develop a system by which investigators can apply for funds.

In the second year, researchers will gather and enter data on phenotypes, acquire and install new equipment, and complete the renovation of the specimen collection laboratory information and management system of the Indiana Genomics Initiative cores.

In the third and final year funded by the grant, scientists will collect and extract DNA and begin DNA analyses and examine the function of newly discovered genetic mutations.

But INGEN's mission is more than just an advanced probe of human biology. IU scientists will be at the forefront of science to develop better medical treatments, exploring the human frontier.

For more information about the Indiana Genomics Initiative, visit its Web site at http://www.ingen.iu.edu.

Drafting INGEN

Several IUSM faculty and staff members consulted on and helped with the drafting of the Indiana Genomics
Initiative proposal made to the Lilly Endowment:

William F. Bosron, PhD
Assistant dean for graduate studies; Professor
of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Medicine

Clement J. McDonald, MD
Distinguished Professor
Co-director of the Regenstrief Institute

Howard J. Edenberg, MD
Professor of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology
and Medical and Molecular Genetics

David W. Crabb, MD
Chair, Department of Medicine
Assistant Dean for Research

Munro Peacock, MB, ChB
Professor of Medicine

Gary D. Hutchins, PhD
Professor of Radiology

Bruce A. Molitoris, MD
Professor of Medicine

Ting-Kai Li, MD
Distinguished Professor of Medicine

John K. Critser, PhD
Professor of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine

Gail H. Vance, MD
Acting chair, Department of Medical and
Molecular Genetics

Craig A. Stewart, BA
Director, System Services-University Information Technology Services

Ronald Henriksen
President, Advanced Research and Technology Institute

The Indiana Genomics Initiative Steering Committee

This committee of Indiana University leaders will provide overall governance of the Indiana Genomics Initiative.
The yet-to-be formed executive advisory board will provide advice and guidance to the steering committee.
Board members will be chosen from the nation's most distinguished genomics scientists and bioethicists as well
as prominent figures in information technology, business, industry and government.

Myles Brand, PhD
Chair
IU President

D. Craig Brater, MD
IU School of Medicine Dean
Walter J. Daly Professor

Gerald L. Bepko, JD, LLD IUPUI
Chancellor
IU Vice President - Long Range Planning

Ora H. Pescovitz, MD
IUSM Executive Associate Dean for
Research Affairs

Michael McRobbie, PhD
IU Vice President for Information Technology
Chief Information Officer (Office of the President)

Jeffery D. Palmer, PhD
Chair and IU Distinguished Professor, Department of Biology (College of Arts and Sciences)