BioWorld International Correspondent
PARIS - Seven organizations from five countries have teamed up to create the Alternative Splicing Database (ASD) project, describing it as a "major European initiative in the post-genomics field" that "highlights the importance of alternative RNA splicing, the mechanism that enables the cell to generate several distinct proteins from a single gene."
The ASD project aims to build a unique human database of all alternatively spliced genes in order to develop new diagnostic tools for major human diseases such as cancer, neurodegeneration and infertility. Recent studies have shown that alternative RNA splicing affects at least 60 percent of human genes, and defects in alternative splicing are increasingly recognized as the cause of many diseases.
As part of the project, published data on alternative exons from humans, mice, fruit flies and rats will be collected and integrated into a computer database to give researchers and clinicians access to disease-relevant information. In addition, the ASD consortium will develop DNA microarrays that contain cDNAs of all the splicing regulatory proteins and their isoforms, as well as chips that incorporate a number of disease-relevant genomic signatures for cancer, neurodegeneration and infertility. Those chips then will be used to test an individual's predisposition to a given disease and to diagnose the condition.
The project is being partially funded by the European Commission's Fifth Framework Program. Laurent Bracco, executive vice president of technology at Paris-based ExonHit Therapeutics, one of the consortium members, told BioWorld International that the commission would be providing funding of €2.5 million over three years and that the total cost of the project would be about twice that. While the scientific community would be given free access to some of the data generated by the project, Bracco said there would be a commercial element, too, through the sale of chips, for instance. That could provide revenues for continuing the collaboration beyond the initial three-year period, he added.
As the only commercial company participating in the project, ExonHit will have first right of refusal on the exploitation of the data and technology arising from it.
The participants in the three-year project include biologists involved in data collection and chip optimization and design, as well as computer scientists working on data mining and user-friendly data interfaces. The coordinator is Stefan Stamm of the University of Erlangen-Nurenberg's Institute of Biochemistry in Germany. The other six members of the consortium are Peer Bork, of the European Molecular Biological Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany; Olivier Cochet, of ExonHit Therapeutics; Roderic Guigo, of IMIM in Barcelona, Spain; Juan Valcarcel, of ICREA and the Centre de Regulaci Gen mica in Barcelona; Alphonse Thanaraj Thangavel, of the European Bioinformatics Institute in Hinxton, UK; and Hermona Soreq, of The Hebrew University in Jerusalem.