"This clinical sequencing core facility will generate laboratory data to be used for the evaluation of patient tumors. I hope we will someday expand to genotyping patients to identify potential susceptibility to autoimmune disease and many other conditions as the field of precision medicine develops," Dr. Wakeland said.

###


Co-lead authors of the eLife study from UT Southwestern were Dr. Prithvi Raj, Instructor of Immunology, and Dr. Ekta Rai, a former postdoctoral fellow in the Wakeland lab. Other contributing UTSW authors, all from Immunology, included Dr. Ran Song, postdoctoral researcher; Dr. Shaheen Khan, Instructor; Benjamin Wakeland, database analyst; Kasthuribai Viswanathan and Carlos Arana, computational biologists; Chaoying Liang, laboratory manager; Bo Zhang, senior research associate; Ferdicia Carr-Johnson; former lab manager; and Dr. Igor Dozmorov, Dr. Chandrashekhar Pasare, and Dr. Quan-Zhen Li, Associate Professors. Dr. Pasare holds the J. Wayne Streilein, M.D. Professorship in Immunology and is a Louise W. Kahn Scholar in Biomedical Research.

Additional UTSW co-authors include Dr. Christine Garcia, Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and in the Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development; Dr. Carol Wise, Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and in the McDermott Center; and Dr. David Karp, Chief of Rheumatic Diseases and Professor of Internal Medicine. Dr. Garcia holds the Kern and Marnie Wildenthal President's Research Council Professorship in Medical Science, while Dr. Karp holds the Fredye Factor Chair in Rheumatoid Arthritis Research, and the Harold C. Simmons Chair in Arthritis Research.

Co-senior author was Dr. Patrick Gaffney of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. Others contributors were from Yale School of Medicine, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation; Université Catholique de Louvain; Penn State College of Medicine; Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and Cincinnati VA Medical Center; University of Southern California; and UCLA.

This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Alliance for Lupus Research, and the Walter M. and Helen D. Bader Center for Research on Arthritis and Autoimmune Diseases.

About UT Southwestern Medical Center

UT Southwestern, one of the premier academic medical centers in the nation, integrates pioneering biomedical research with exceptional clinical care and education. The institution's faculty includes many distinguished members, including six who have been awarded Nobel Prizes since 1985. The faculty of almost 2,800 is responsible for groundbreaking medical advances and is committed to translating science-driven research quickly to new clinical treatments. UT Southwestern physicians provide medical care in about 80 specialties to more than 100,000 hospitalized patients and oversee approximately 2.2 million outpatient visits a year.

Back to HCB News

Medical Research Homepage