Frozen genes show promise as weapon against disease Archived article from Sep 22, 2003 By Joseph Blumberg   A twin colonnade of gleaming stainless steel tanks stretches across a Busch campus laboratory. The tanks are filled with a million frozen genetic specimens that may hold the key for curing many diseases and solving some of today's most challenging biomedical mysteries. This is the Rutgers University Cell and DNA Repository, a storehouse of cell lines cultured from blood samples donated by more than 40,000 people around the world. Jay Tischfield, director of the Rutgers University Cell and DNA Repository Photo by Dennis Connors Permanently stored, or "immortalized," as the geneticists say, in a bath of liquid nitrogen at minus 196 degrees Celsius, these cell lines are a source from which DNA is extracted. The DNA is shipped to scientists worldwide engaged in the war against such diseases as schizophrenia, Alzheimer's and diabetes. "The goal of the repository is to provide researchers throughout the world with specimens and tools to help illuminate the complex patterns of disease inheritance," says Jay Tischfield, the repository's scientific director. "We not only bank the specimens, but we generate molecular genetics data for analysis along with clinical data from individuals whose DNA is on deposit." The federal government regards the facility, established at Rutgers in 1998, as such an important weapon in its disease-fighting arsenal that it has awarded Rutgers nearly $50 million for the collection, preservation and distribution of the genetic materials. In July, the National Institute of Mental Health provided the university $22.6 million to set up the Center for Collaborative Genetic Studies on Mental Disorders as a resource for investigations into the genetics of mental illness; and, a few weeks later, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases awarded Rutgers $9.3 million. The National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism are also funding work at the repository. Rutgers geneticists will staff the new mental disorders center and employ its genetic resources in a search for the genetic bases of behavioral disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disease, depression and Alzheimer's disease. The researchers will analyze genetic data obtained from the repository's collections and, in collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry and the National Institutes of Health, investigate the effects and benefits of medications in groups of people that can be distinguished on the basis of the genes they carry. The ultimate goal is to use genetic information to prescribe the specific medication that is likely to be most effective in any particular individual. Investigators at Rutgers and UMDNJ–Robert Wood Johnson Medical School have also received samples from the repository and are using them in further studies of mental diseases and substance abuse. "Finding the genetic basis of an illness like schizophrenia or bipolar disease is like finding multiple needles in a field full of haystacks," says Tischfield, who is also the Duncan and Nancy MacMillan Professor of Genetics, chair of the Rutgers Genetics Department, and professor of pediatrics and psychiatry, UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. "One of the best ways to find these genes is to look at affected families, observe how the disease is passed down to family members, and then examine their DNA." Biomedical research has demonstrated that genes unquestionably contribute to a person's vulnerability to mental disorders, but researchers have concluded that no single gene alone could be responsible for the range of symptoms exhibited in a given mental illness. Rather, the consensus points to the interaction of many genes. In conjunction with genetic components of these diseases, environmental and developmental factors undoubtedly play a role as well. Tischfield says the Rutgers University Cell and DNA Repository is important in part because it has amassed a huge inventory of precisely the kind of information and materials needed to pursue this potentially highly productive approach. Its value to the scientific community is also attributable to the exceedingly high quality of the 1,500 cell lines it produces each month for the government institutes and other research organizations – four to five times as many as any other research facility. Once the implicated genes have been identified, analytical tools, such as those that made the Human Genome Project possible, can be used to devise new molecular and genetic therapies to combat the disorders that affect so many individuals and their families.

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