All Of Us Issues Funding Opportunity For Genome Centers For Sequencing, Analysis

May 23, 2018

By Bio-IT World Staff

May 23, 2018 | Today, less than a month after opening national enrollment, the All of Us Research Program issued a call for Genome Centers able to generate genotype and whole genome sequence data from participants’ biosamples. The program anticipates funding up to two Genome Center awards in FY2018, with analyses to begin this fall. 

Additionally, the All of Us Research Program announced a pilot study in coming months on the responsible return of genetic information to participants, which will include education and genetic counseling, as part of the program’s commitment to make all participant data available to participants themselves. More details about the pilot study will be available as plans develop.

Information produced from the Genome Centers will become a critical component in the program’s precision medicine research platform, a national resource for investigators working on a variety of important health questions, according to the All Of Us announcement.

Genome Centers that wish to apply for funding may request funds to generate and analyze genotype data from 100,000 participants in the first year while beginning to also employ whole genome sequencing methods. In remaining years of the anticipated five-year project period, applicants may request funds for whole genome sequencing for as many as 200,000 participants annually.

These Centers also will operate an analysis workflow resulting in high-confidence calling of all variant types (single nucleotide variants, small insertions/deletions, larger structural variants including copy number variations) and establish a robust pipeline to securely transfer data to the All of Us Data and Research Center.

Applications will be evaluated on teams’ technical approach, plans to scale up operations, capabilities to operate a clinical validation laboratory (to verify medically-relevant variants in certain genes), experience, past performance, and cost proposal, and on other considerations related to programmatic priority.

Applications are due on July 12, 2018, and more details can be found at the funding announcement pdf and at an upcoming webinar on Thursday, May 31, 2018, 12:30 p.m.–2:00 p.m. EDT. Send inquiries to PMICPFOAInquiries@mail.nih.gov.