The Genetic Contributions to Common Diseases
By Blair S. Walker
What makes Alzheimer’s bedevil your father, while skipping you? Why are women seven times more likely to get thyroid-crippling Grave’s disease than men? Are one’s odds of getting colon cancer or Huntington disease simply the luck of the draw? Thankfully, we live in an age where medical researchers are increasingly finding the answers to these questions are embedded in our genes. And the Miller School of Medicine is poised to make a big difference, thanks to the addition of a world-renowned husband and wife genetics team.
Margaret Pericak-Vance, Ph.D., and Jeffery Vance, M.D., Ph.D., opened the Miller School’s Miami Institute for Human Genomics (MIHG) in January, after more than two decades of groundbreaking human genetics research at Duke University. The Vances were enticed by Miller School Dean Pascal J. Goldschmidt, M.D., who was previously chairman of Duke’s Department of Medicine.
The drumbeat of genetics discoveries associated with the Vances hasn’t slowed since their arrival at UM. In July, their role in pinpointing a gene linked to multiple sclerosis (MS) was announced. Pericak-Vance was a corresponding author of a study about the MS finding that was published in “Nature Genetics” magazine.
“Here at the Institute, our focus is on identifying the genetic contributions to common diseases that affect all of us,” Jeffery Vance says. “In the past, human geneticists worked with relatively rare disorders that could be triggered if a single gene was affected.
“Now we’re looking at susceptibility genes, which are genes that make you more susceptible to common things like Parkinson’s and hypertension,” Vance continues. “They do this in concert with other genes, as well as your environment.”
To get the Miami Institute for Human Genomics percolating at top speed, the Vances need even more funding and manpower. “We need people who are molecular geneticists, like myself, as well as clinicians, statistical geneticists, programmers and database people,” Jeffery Vance says. Once that batch of staffers is in place, MIHG will be looking to hire 50 more staffers, according to Margaret Pericak-Vance, who’s a genetic epidemiologist.
