Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center will use Affymetrix GeneChip® microarray technology to develop new applications for research projects focusing on diseases such as cancer and HIV/AIDS.
Under this three-year research collaboration, Vanderbilt-Ingram and Vanderbilt University Medical Center will analyze genomic information across a large number of patient samples. They hope that this research will advance the understanding of such diseases to better predict response to various therapies.
"Cancer is a genetic disease. The technological capabilities that Affymetrix provides in gene expression and genotyping provides an important set of tools to examine the molecular and genetic basis of cancer," says Shawn Levy, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical informatics and director of the Vanderbilt Microarray Shared Resource. "This partnership provides a mechanism to bring these technologies to the forefront of translational research in helping Vanderbilt understand not only the molecular basis for the disease but also the genetic disparities in various cancers and responses to therapy."
The HIV/AIDS translational research project will aim to help clinicians avoid the often irreversible and costly complications of therapy, the collaborators note. The Affymetrix Human Mitochondrial Resequencing Array 2.0 will be used as a research tool to identify genetic variants that may make some patients more susceptible to adverse effects of certain drugs.