MCG selected as RNA laboratory for worldwide diab...( The Medical College of Georgia Cente...),Health

The Medical College of Georgia Center for Biotechnology and Genomic Medicine has been selected to isolate RNA and DNA from the blood of thousands of children involved in a worldwide study of the causes of type 1 diabetes.

MCG also is enrolling children in the mammoth study that will eventually follow 8,000 at-risk babies from four states and three countries for 15 years, collecting blood every three months as they go.

The TEDDY The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young study is keeping tabs on many aspects of the childrens lives from emergency room visits to over-the-counter medicines in an effort to identify environmental triggers for diabetes in children with known high-risk genes.

Once you know the risk factors, you can modulate the risk factors to prevent diabetes, says Dr. Jin-Xiong She, center director and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Genomic Medicine.

Dr. She was among the scientists who conceived the idea of TEDDY and successfully applied for National Institutes of Health funding to pursue it in 2003.

He recently was named principal investigator on the additional five-year, $5 million contract to isolate RNA and DNA from the regularly collected blood.

About 20,000 samples already are awaiting the process. The MCG Center developed a robotic automation that processes 96 samples in about two hours compared to the standard of a few samples in about six hours to handle the huge and growing volume.

Gene expression over time is a new area of research, says Dr. She. The newly established infrastructure enables MCG to isolate nucleic acids for similar large-scale studies.

Isolated nucleic acids will be stored at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases Repository. TEDDY scientists will eventually analyze the impact of environmental triggers on the bodys basic building blocks with an eye toward identifying biomarkers that giv
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