The Edinburgh Molecular Mechanisms Cluster

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Modern medicine enables doctors to treat diseases better than ever before, but there is still much more to learn. Human genetics can help. Tens of thousands of genes have been found underlying a number of devastating diseases, from Alzheimer's to COVID-19. These genes sometimes gives us clues that can help everyone with that disease, not just people who have particular genes. We have already shown that this works: we found a gene in severe COVID-19 that led directly to a new and effective treatment.To make the jump from disease gene to treatment, we need better information about what disease genes actually do in the right cell types from the human body, and in conditions that mimic real disease. Our plan is to set up a system to study how genes work in hard-to-get cell types and conditions. We will use real human samples, donated by our patients, that would otherwise be discarded. We are already able to do this with samples of brain, lung, and skin. To mimic the complicated environment inside a patient even more closely, we will then add a range of different chemicals to the samples and see what happens to the genes, and the cells. We will share our data quickly with scientists across the world to move medical research and drug development forward. We will build a community of doctors and scientists to help guide us towards the most important and useful gene functions. Together, our system will give much more information about genes and how they work to make disease better or worse, giving us a chance to find better and more accurate treatments to help more patients.