The goal of the NeuroGenomics and Informatics Center is to form a multidisciplinary team working at the forefront of personalized medicine that will transform the field of human neurogenomics by going beyond the analysis of genomic DNA to explore other omics layers. We use epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics for molecular phenotyping of human samples, which we believe is instrumental to understand the biology of complex traits and develop precision medicine strategies.
The NGI Center focuses on deep molecular characterization of neurodegeneration and diseases of the central nervous system (CNS), with an emphasis on Alzheimer disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), frontotemporal dementia (FTD), and stroke. To achieve the goals of the Center we plan to address the following objectives:
- increase the understanding of the etiology of neurodegeneration and psychiatric diseases by identifying novel genes and pathways implicated in disease,
- enable early diagnosis by identifying novel molecular biomarkers,
- reveal novel intermediate traits involved in neurodegeneration and psychiatric diseases,
- provide strategies to optimize cohort selection for testing therapeutic targets, and
- identify and validate disease-modifying treatments and drugs for neurodegenerative and psychiatric diseases
The Center expects to accomplish these objectives through the use of large phenotypic and multi-omic datasets of human neurodegenerative diseases.