MolPAGE is a 4-year project, funded by the European Union FP6 programme to the value of 12 million Euros, which brings together a consortium of 19 leading academic institutions, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. The programme is coordinated from Oxford University and aims to tackle diabetes and one of its major complications, vascular disease, through the development and application of a range of genomic, proteomic and metabonomic technology platforms to carry out ‘molecular phenotyping’ on a medium to epidemiological scale
The research programme has become possible because of recent developments in ‘omic’ techniques which have allowed researchers to gain unprecedented detailed information on biomarkers (genes, proteins and other molecules) affecting the progression and treatment of common disease.
The Challenge
Epidemiologists, clinical trialists and experimental scientists are confronted with a wealth of potential ‘omic’ technologies for the ‘molecular phenotyping’ of large numbers of biological samples obtained from cohorts, patients or animal models. The challenge now is to use these technologies effectively to define the relationships between sets of biomarkers and disease. The concept of the MolPAGE project is to bring together a scientific consortium with the necessary expertise to enable the development of these ‘omic’ technology tools to permit high-throughput analyses of significant numbers of samples, to ensure that protocols are established for sample collection and storage, and that systems are in place to capture, warehouse, analyse and integrate the range of biological data that will emerge from these studies.
In the first instance, ‘molecular phenotyping’ technologies from the project will be applied to biomarker discovery and typing in metabolic disease. Diabetes and its associated vascular complications are a major cause of ill health and premature death in Europe and worldwide. [More]
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