UMDNJ INFORMATICS INSTITUTE PRESENTS SYMPOSIUM

A research symposium, "Genomics, Proteomics, Pharmacogenomics and Bioinformatics," was held on May 9 at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS). Some 200 attendees–a standing-room only crowd– gathered to hear University experts talk about the impact of technology on biomedical research.

The Internet, innovative computing technologies, and digital information are revolutionizing the way scientists do their work. There’s a new word in our vocabulary: bioinformatics. It’s the creation and development of advanced information and computational technologies for problems in biology, dealing with storing, retrieving and analyzing biological data such as nucleic acid and protein sequences, structures, functions, pathways and genetic interactions. This new technology has made a quantum leap forward in response to the current explosion in genetic research.

The University is taking a leadership role in bioinformatics in its creation of the UMDNJ Informatics Institute. In May 2002 UMDNJ received a five-year, $2.7 million IAIMS (Integrated Advanced Information Management Systems) Operational Phase Grant from the National Library of Medicine, only the 12th institution to receive such a grant since the program’s inception in 1984. The University has formulated a detailed strategic plan to develop an information technology network, and the Informatics Institute was established to further these goals.

Welsh's presentation, on using advanced technology for drug discovery, was one of several designed to give an overview of the field.

"The scientific world is increasingly complex, and we’re making sense of it with computers," says Bruce Byrne, PhD, associate director for education at the Informatics Institute and one of the presenters. He spoke on the new bioinformatics curriculum, which includes the study of genomes, molecular modeling, data sources, computer technology and drug discovery. Right now, it is a certificate program awarded in conjunction with a PhD degree from UMDNJ-Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Other degree offerings are being considered.

Symposium host William J. Welsh, PhD, director of the Informatics Institute, Norman H. Edelman Professor in Bioinformatics, and professor of pharmacology at RWJMS, explained that the half-day seminar was designed as a series of short, hard-hitting lectures, to provide an overview of the field. Welsh’s own presentation was on computational strategies for accelerating drug discovery. Other presenters and topics crossed many disciplines and fields of study. They included:

• John Kerrigan, PhD, UMDNJ’s Department of Information Services & Technology; "Development of a Model for the Topoisomerase I/DNA/Drug Ternary Cleavable Complex."

• Hong Li, PhD, UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School; "Use of Proteomics to Investigate Heart Disease."

• Scott R. Diehl, PhD, UMDNJ-New Jersey Dental School; "Applying Genetic Variation to Drug Development and Understanding Disease Etiology."

• Frank Sonnenberg, MD, RWJMS; "A Hypertext Guideline Markup Language System for Encoding Clinical Guidelines."

• Ming Ouyang, PhD; UMDNJ Informatics Institute; "Novel Approaches for Analysis of Micro-array Data."

• Honghua Li, PhD, RWJMS; "Toward Establishing a High-throughput Genotyping System for Genome-Scale Analysis."

A question-and-answer session and poster/abstract presentation followed. All the presentations may be viewed on the Internet (www.umdnj.edu/symposium).

The symposium was co-sponsored by the UMDNJ Informatics Institute and the IAIMS Project, and there will be others to follow.