'Roadmap' to train next generation of biomedical scientists

HOUSTON -- (October 5, 2006) -- A consortium of six Houston educational institutions led by Baylor College of Medicine plans to train a new kind of researcher to take the lead in a recent Roadmap grant initiative from the National Institutes of Health. Other institutions involved include Rice University, the University of Houston, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and UT Medical School at Houston.

Genomics, proteomics and imaging generate vast amounts of biological data that need to be collected, stored and integrated in a way that is easily retrievable. This requires a new breed of biomedical investigators who can use such information to generate new hypotheses for understanding the underlying biological processes that may lead to interventions against various types of human diseases.

This training grant will be administered jointly by the Graduate Program in Structural and Computational Biology and Molecular Biology at Baylor College of Medicine and the Keck Center of the Gulf Coast Consortia.

"This shift in methods of information acquisition requires an interdisciplinary scientist who can understand the experiments that produce the data as well as methods for storing, accessing and extracting useful knowledge from the data sets" said Dr. Timothy Palzkill, the grant's principal investigator and professor in of molecular virology and microbiology at BCM.

"In our training grant, the goal is to teach these new scientists how to handle large scale data sets and to use them to generate new biomedical discoveries," said Palzkill. "This was definitely a group effort from faculty at all the institutions and representing various disciplines from medicine, biochemistry, cell biology and genetics to computer science and statistics."

The estimated eight students in the program will come from various departments and Ph.D. programs in the five institutions, he said. If their research falls under the broad auspices of this grant, they can apply to be a trainee under it and receive NIH support for their studies. The grant is approximately for $1.6 million for a period of four years, said Palzkill.

This training grant will lead to new curriculum development by the Graduate Program in Structural and Computational Biology and Molecular Biophysics at Baylor College of Medicine. These courses will be jointly taught by the training faculty and students in any of the participating institutions can enroll in these courses. There are also other training mechanisms such as journal clubs, workshops and retreats to foster the interdisciplinary nature of the training. Each trainee will be mentored by two faculty members with different disciplines.

Work such as that by Dr. Wah Chiu, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at BCM and director of the National Center for Macromolecular Imaging, pointed the way to the need for scientists who can manipulate large amounts of molecular imaging data and extract from it discoveries on structure and function relationships, said Palzkill. The large amount of data generated by the BCM Human Genome Sequencing Center in efforts to understand genetic diseases also spotlighted the need for this training program, he said.

"We hope to train scientists for this exciting new future in biomedical science which is driven by vast amounts of quantitative observations of various types," said Chiu, a member of the grant's steering committee. "More and more, this kind of expertise is needed to identify new ideas and generate new concepts in translational medicine. We are particularly pleased that we are among the six academic institutions to win this award in a highly competitive application process."

A total of 32 faculty members from the five institutions are mentors in the program. Palzkill said plans are underway to begin student recruitment soon.