The Georgia Tech led Nanomedicince Center for Nucleoprotein Machines has received $16.1 million dollars for five years as part of its renewal by the National Institute of Health.  The eight-institution research team plans to pursue development of a clinically viable gene correction technology for single-gene disorders and demonstrate the technology’s efficacy with sickle cell disease. 

Sickle cell disease is a genetic condition present at birth that affects more than 70,000 Americans. It involves a single altered gene that produces abnormal hemoglobin — the protein that carries oxygen in the blood.  .  "Even though researchers know sickle cell disease is caused by a single A to T mutation in the beta-globin gene, there is no widely available cure," said center director Gang Bao, the Robert A. Milton Chair in Biomedical Engineering in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. "By directly and precisely fixing the single mutation, we hope to reduce or eliminate the sickle cell population in an individual’s blood stream and replace the sickle cells with healthy red blood cells."

Nanomedicine Center for Nucleoprotein Machines

The center is one of eight NIH Nanomedicine Development Centers established in 2005 and 2006, a key initiative of the NIH’s long-term nanomedicine research goals. The centers have highly multidisciplinary scientific teams that include biologists, physicians, mathematicians, engineers and computer scientists. Through an intense competition, the NIH selected four centers for second phase funding, including the one led by Georgia Tech.  The center includes researches not only from Georgia Tech but also the Medical College of Georgia, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York University Medical Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and Harvard University. 

The National Institute of Health (NIH)

The NIH is the government agency primarily responsible for health and biomedical research.  Their goal is to help prevent, diagnose and treat diseases through research in its own labs and grants to non federal scientists.  For more information, visit their home page at http://www.nih.gov/, or check out the original article at http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/nanomedicine-center/.