EU project maps genes to develop personalised medicines
Blueprint will spend €40m on examining behaviour of blood genes
A European Union (EU) research project called Blueprint will spend €40m on examining the behaviour of blood genes in healthy people and leukaemia patients. Its consortium of 41 European universities, research centres and companies want to create 100 reference models of gene collections and environments, helping pharmaceutical companies tailor the development of medicines for different categories of patients.
The project will study the models ‘to advance and exploit knowledge of the underlying biological processes and mechanisms in health and disease’.
The consortium includes the UK-based European Bioinformatics Institute and Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Bioinformatics and for Molecular Genetics.
Companies involved include Germany’s Cellzome and Eurice; Belgium’s Diagenode; Sweden’s Halo Genomics and Sigolis; and Italy’s Siena Biotech.
The EU is supplying €30m of the budget.
The European Commission commented: ‘Blueprint aims to deliver high impact results that can be integrated in existing medical products and technologies.’