The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is establishing the Multi-Omics for Health and Disease Consortium, with an initial allocation of approximately $11 million in the consortium’s first year of funding. This newly formed consortium aims to advance the generation and analysis of “multi-omic” data for research related to human health.
Multi-omics research involves an approach that incorporates various “omics” data types from distinct research areas, including genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. Each of these data types provides unique insights into different aspects of biological systems. Leveraging these data types collectively has become increasingly feasible due to advancements in high-throughput technologies and data science.
Integrating multiple data types from a single participant’s biological sample can offer a more comprehensive understanding of the molecular factors and cellular processes involved in human health and disease. This approach has significant potential in areas such as defining disease subtypes, identifying biomarkers, and discovering drug targets.
Joannella Morales, Ph.D., a program director at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) involved in leading the consortium, stated, “Beyond gaining insights into individual diseases, the primary goal of this consortium is to develop scalable and generalizable multi-omics research strategies as well as methods to analyze these large and complex datasets. We expect these strategies will ultimately be adopted by other research groups, ensuring the consortium’s work will have broad and long-lasting impacts for clinical research.”
Approximately half of the allocated funds will support the activities of six disease study sites. These sites will investigate conditions such as fatty liver diseases, hepatocellular carcinoma, asthma, chronic kidney disease, and preeclampsia, among others. The study sites will enroll research participants, with a focus on including at least 75% of individuals from ancestral backgrounds underrepresented in genomics research. Additionally, the sites will collect data on participants’ environments and social determinants of health, which will be combined with the multi-omics data to provide a comprehensive view of factors contributing to disease risk and outcomes.
Participant specimens will undergo processing at the omics production center, where high-throughput molecular assays will generate genomic, epigenomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic data. This data will be analyzed to create molecular profiles of disease and non-disease states. The data analysis and coordination center will then integrate all these datasets into organized, comprehensive datasets, which will be made available to the scientific community for further research.
Erin Ramos, Ph.D., M.P.H., Deputy Director of NHGRI’s Division of Genomic Medicine, emphasized the significance of multi-omics studies in biomedical research. She noted that these studies have the potential to advance understanding of disease onset and progression while offering valuable insights for treatment design and drug discovery. The establishment of this consortium represents an essential step in realizing these advancements.
The consortium is slated to receive approximately $50.3 million in funding over five years, contingent on the availability of funds. The award is jointly funded by NHGRI, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).
