Objective
Tuberculosis (TB) is a major global problem that urgently requires new preventive and therapeutic approaches. Only minority of people infected with M. tuberculosis develops active TB. Genetic studies provide an unbiased way to scan the whole human genome to find sequence polymorphisms that predispose to TB. Therefore, we have established the world s largest sample collection for TB genetic studies. Now we genotype 6,000 HIV-negative patients with pulmonary TB and 6,000 healthy controls at ~1 million polymorphic sites across the whole genome. This genome-wide association study (GWAS) will allow us to compare frequency of genetic variants among patients and controls to find genes that protect from TB.
Given that susceptibility to TB is a complex disease, a complementary strategy in genetic research is to identify variants that control intermediate cellular phenotypes. Here, for the first time I will undertake a large-scale study to identify polymorphisms that control gene expression in human macrophages, cells that play key role in protection from M. tuberculosis. We will study in vitro global gene expression in uninfected and M. tuberculosis-infected macrophages from hundreds of healthy volunteers correlating it with the genome-wide genotype data of these subjects. This will allow us to identify variants that regulate differential gene expression in macrophages upon M. tuberculosis infection. We will also study functional effects of the polymorphisms associated with TB risk in the previous and ongoing studies. Taken together these experiments will discover genes and biological pathways involved in protection from M. tuberculosis and will characterise macrophage transcription profile of subjects that are genetically predisposed to TB.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine pneumology tuberculosis
- natural sciences biological sciences genetics genomes
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
ERC-2010-StG_20091118
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Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Host institution
CB2 1TN CAMBRIDGE
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.