The David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA received a $7.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop new methods to diagnose rare genetic disorders, according to a UCLA statement released on Tuesday.
UCLA is one of six institutions that will be participating in the $120 million initiative, called the Undiagnosed Diseases Network.
Teams of geneticists at the network sites will study patients with prolonged undiagnosed diseases, according to the statement.
“This program will enable us to discover new genes causing ultra-rare medical conditions and to identify environmental factors that lead to disease or that interact with genes to cause disease,” said Eric Vilain, one of the principal investigators on the grant, in the statement.
The Undiagnosed Diseases Network will start accepting applications for prospective patients in the fall.
Compiled by Chandini Soni, Bruin senior staff.