SAN DIEGO—Genotyping specialist Illumina announced recently an agreement with the Max-Planck Institute (MPI) of Psychiatry, based in Munich, Germany, that will see the MPI researchers apply Illumina's Sentrix BeadChips and Infinium assay to a large-scale genotyping study of patients with psychiatric disorders. The study will be performed at the MPI's Center for Applied Genotyping (CAGT).
According to Dr. Florian Holsboer, director of the MPI of Psychiatry, the institute has collected DNA samples from two independent groups of patients with depression and an equal number of age-matched controls. These DNA samples will be initially genotyped in a "whole-genome" approach, using Illumina's 100K Infinium product, which is covering more than 100,000 SNPs, dispersed over the entire genome.
"We plan to identify haplotypes at a number of loci significantly associated with response to drug treatment of depression and anxiety," Holsboer says. "Once identified, the genes will be functionally validated. These studies range from gene-gene interactions to signaling pathways, proteomics, chemical genomics and the generation of mice carrying the respective mutations."
He adds that the pharmacogenetic studies are focused on the discovery and development of genotype-based personalized medicines for treatment of depression and anxiety, and cites a recent paper the Institute published in Nature Genetics, which demonstrated that antidepressant treatment response can indeed be predicted by genotyping.
To facilitate the project, Illumina will be supplying two different Sentrix BeadChips to complement the BeadStation already in place, licensed access to its Infinium assay and related software upgrades, and Infinium reagents for amplifying, fragmenting, hybridizing, labeling, and detecting DNA samples. According to Jay Flatley, Illumina President and CEO, the systems will provide a synergistic effect to MPI's research efforts.
"There is very little overlap between SNP markers assayable with the two BeadChips," he says. "The 100K product is exon-centric—over 70 percent of the markers are located in or very near genes—while the 250K product is a pure TagSNP play, providing additional genome-wide resolution as well as the proxy-like efficiency of representing other associated markers in the haplotype."
The project is tailor-made for the CAGT, which provides infrastructure and technical support for
large-scale genotyping projects at MPI and Munich's the Institute of Human Genetics from the GSF National Research Center for Environment and Health. It also collaborates with Affectis Pharmaceuticals to translate MPI's and its own discoveries into drug candidates targeting depression and anxiety.
According to Holsboer, the projects conducted at the MPI of Psychiatry will augment existing data on haplotype block structure and genome variation in the tested large population (Bavarian-Caucasian) with high precision.
"We trust that the collaboration of the Max-Planck Institute of Psychiatry with Illumina on the one hand and with Affectis Pharmaceuticals and big pharma industries at the other will offer a unique opportunity to concatenate academic and corporate competences with a top-notch technology ultimately resulting in better treatment modalities for depression and anxiety," he adds.
