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$10 Million Grant Awarded to Support a National Genomic and Proteomic Network for Preterm Birth Research

Heping Zhang, Professor in the Division of Biostatistics, serves as principal investigator on a $10 million grant awarded from the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Child Health and Human Developments.

Yale University has been awarded over $10 million for the next four and a half years from the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Child Health and Human Developments (NICHD). The grant will form a Data Management, Statistics, and Informatics Core at Yale and support a National Genomic and Proteomic Network for Preterm Birth Research. This five-site network will work to identify genetic and environmental determinants of preterm births and provide a public resource for future research on preterm birth. Other institutions conducting the research in conjunction with Yale are the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Utah, the University of Texas Medical Branch, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Heping Zhang, Ph.D., Professor in the Division of Biostatistics in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health (EPH), will serve as the principal investigator of this core grant for Yale University. Zhang will oversee all aspects of the effort including study design, data management, statistics, informatics, coordination, and administration of funding for the entire network.

"This multidisciplinary and multi-center network will be able to recruit a large and representative population of preterm births and utilize high-throughput genomic technologies and advanced statistical methods," said Zhang. "The combination of a large sample with the advanced technologies is critically important to the understanding of complex diseases and conditions such as preterm births," commented Zhang. Dr. Duane Alexander, Director of the NICHD, stated that the network is one of the major efforts and top priorities of the NICHD.

Premature birth is a leading cause of infant mortality. Although advances have been made in the identification of some possible causes of premature birth, such as intrauterine infection, uterine bleeding, excessive uterine stretch, maternal psychosocial stress, and fetal physiological stress, more understanding is needed in order to implement effective interventions of premature birth. The goal of the network is to obtain an understanding of the pathophysiology of premature birth, discover target molecules and diagnostic biomarkers, and aid in innovating and implementing strategies for premature birth prevention.

Prakash Nadkarni, M.D., Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and of Epidemiology and Public Health and Kei Cheung, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at the Yale Center for Medical Informatics and Genetics will direct the data management and informatics. Laura Ment, M.D., Professor of Pediatrics at Yale and Kenneth Williams, Ph.D., Director of Yale's W.M. Keck Foundation Biotechnology Resource Laboratory, will provide clinical and scientific expertise. Analisa Lozano, Coordinator in EPH, will serve as coordinator of the network.