The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday that it has established a network of Genomics Centers of Excellence (PGCoE) with $90 million in funding support for five laboratories and partners. their scholarly work.
The CDC said in a statement that the PGCoE network will advance and enhance innovation and engineering capabilities in pathogen genomics, molecular epidemiology, and bioinformatics, with the goal of improving prevention, control, and control. control and respond to microbial threats to public health.
The CDC says five-year grant awards will be given to five state public health laboratories, each of which will be partnered with one or more academic institutions.
The five laboratories are the Georgia Department of Public Health, the Minnesota Department of Health, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the Virginia Department of Unified Laboratory Services, and the Washington State Department of Health.
The PGCoEs will serve as a network to perform “a comprehensive analysis of the gaps, needs, and opportunities for genomics in the US public health system,” the CDC said, as well as the experiment. Identify and deploy genomic technologies and applications for public health and prepare for and respond to infectious disease threats.
Christopher Braden, acting director of the National Center for Emerging and Animal Infectious Diseases, says the collaboration between public health laboratories and academic partners in data collection and analysis SARS-CoV-2 genomics has important implications for the agency’s COVID-19 response. .
“Building on that experience by establishing the Center for Pathogen Genomics Excellence, a partnership between state health departments and educational institutions, will help us ensure that health,” Braden said. The community is always innovating, strong and resilient in the future.
A total of $1.7 billion in funding from the American Rescue Plan is helping support current and future genomic surveillance, CDC said. These funds include $400 million for innovation, and about $90 million of that will support the PGCoE network over the next five years, the agency said.
CDC also announced specific academic institutions that partner with each public health laboratory to form Centers of Excellence within the PGCoE network.
The Georgia Department of Public Health will partner with six academic institutions. These include the University of Georgia, Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory University, Augusta University, Georgia State University, and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health will partner with the Broad Institute MIT and Harvard as its primary academic partner. Other partners include Boston University, Mass General Brigham hospital network, Yale University, Fathom Information Design, and Theiagen Genomics.
This node of the network will also serve as the primary CoE for education with Harvard Medical School, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and the Massachusetts Consortium on Agent Readiness (MassCPR).
The Minnesota Department of Health will have the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic as key partners, the CDC said.
Virginia Unified Laboratory Services will partner with the Virginia Department of Health, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the University of Virginia.
And the Washington State Department of Health will partner with the University of Washington, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, and the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, and also with Public Health – Seattle & King County.
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