The National Institutes of Health is investing around $35 million in a research project on lipids, which could help shed light on their role in heart disease, arthritis and other majorillnesses.
The five-year grant will fund the Lipid MAPS Consortium, alarge collaborative effort led by the University ofCalifornia, San Diego. The 'glue grant' will bring diverse groups of scientists together for large-scale studies.
"Today's large, complex biomedical problems demand moreintellectual and physical resources than a singlelaboratory or small group of laboratories can offer," saidDr Elias A. Zerhouni, director of the NationalInstitutes of Health. "By funding scientists from diversefields and bringing them together, this projectdramatically increases the likelihood of a strong return onour research investment. We expect to significantly improveour understanding of the role of lipids in many seriousdiseases."
The Lipid MAPS Consortium will try to identify and measurethe amounts of all lipids within a cell, giving scientists a picture of how lipids interact witheach other and with the inner structures of cells atvarying times and locations.
NIGMS, part of the National Institutes of Health, will provide $6.3million for the first year of the project, which involves more than 30 researchers at 16 universities and two corporations.
It is also hoped that the project will yield new tools,methods and technologies for sorting out and measuring thechanging levels of the 1,000 or more different lipids in agiven cell.
Imbalances in lipids cause or play a role in diseases that affect millions of people worldwide. High cholesterol hasbeen implicated in cardiovascular disease, which killedabout 950,000 Americans in 2002, according to the AmericanHeart Association. Lipids produced by immune system cellsare involved in inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoidarthritis, sepsis, asthma and inflammatory bowel disease.Lipids also play a role in Alzheimer's disease and cancer.
But these fats are essential to life and havemany functions in the cell. "Lipids are the most important biomolecules because theyare the ultimate controllers and regulators of our bodilyprocesses," said Dr Edward Dennis, a chemistry andbiochemistry professor at the University of California, SanDiego, and principal investigator of the Lipid MAPSConsortium.
For example, one class of lipids, the sterols,includes the hormones estrogen and testosterone whichpromote our gender-linked physical traits.
The project will focus on six different areas, including 'lipidomics', informatics, cell biology, lipid detection andquantitation, and lipid synthesis and characterization.
A list of the institutions and principal researchers is availableonline.