Called The RNAi Consortium (TRC), the collaborative effort is based at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and includes six MIT- and Harvard-associated research institutions and five international life sciences organizations.
The goal of TRC is to use the recently discovered RNAi mechanism to create widely applicable research reagents composed of short RNA hairpin sequences carried in lentiviral vectors. These can be used in a wide range of cellular and animal studies to discover the key genes underlying normal physiology and diseases including cancer, diabetes and immunological responses. TRC will not only create and validate these reagents, but will make them available to scientists worldwide through commercial and academic distributors.
TRC is based on a scientific collaboration among principal investigators at six Boston-area research institutions: Nir Hacohen (Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School); William Hahn (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School); Eric Lander (Broad Institute); David Root (Broad Institute); David Sabatini (Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research [WIBR], Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Sheila Stewart (Washington University, formerly at WIBR), and Brent Stockwell (Columbia University, formerly at WIBR).
TRC also involves five member organizations: Pharmaceutical companies Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly and Company, and Novartis;
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Contact: Michelle Nhuch
news@broad.mit.edu
617-252-1064
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
16-Mar-2005