Will Funding Break Through the Bioinformatics Bottleneck?
Earlier this month, the NIH announced the renewal of a grant program that awards up to $275,000 over two years to academic institutes, small businesses, non-profits and other groups, to support research aimed at developing new ways of managing, manipulating and interpreting genomic and other biological data. But the utility and necessity of such grants is not entirely clear.
To be sure, the biomedical community has recognized a potential for a “bioinformatics bottleneck” as the cost of genome sequencing plummets and the sheer quantity of raw data rises, potentially without a corresponding increase in the capacity to interpret that data. And the NIH’s focus on funding innovative, “high risk/high impact” research projects is certainly welcome. But it is far from clear that a handful of two-year, $275,000 grants will produce the right type of innovation, on the right time-scale, to put a dent in the problem. And perhaps more to the point, it is worth taking a closer look at whether any amount of public funding would address some of the other issues at the root of the impending shortfall in biomedical informatics and computational biology research and development.
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NHGRI Commits $9.5 Million to Spur Innovation
This week, the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) committed an additional $9.5 million to fund advancements in genome-sequencing in pursuit of its goal to “reduce the cost of sequencing a mammalian-sized genome to approximately $1,000.” Through its “Revolutionary Genome Sequencing Technologies—The $1,000 Genome” program, the NHGRI continues to drive a remarkable decline in the cost of genomic sequencing (pdf) that leading experts, including former NHGRI Director Francis Collins, predict will soon produce a $1,000 human genome.
Earlier this week, the GLR noted that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has seen fewer applications for genomics-related trademarks, which could be an indicator of a declining rate of innovation in that area. Whether or not that is actually the case, the NHGRI continues to do its part to keep the ideas – and the funds – flowing.
