The dGTEx projects are a huge step forward in the understanding and treatment of childhood disease 

The National Disease Research Interchange (NDRI) is proud to share that its Developmental Genotype Tissue Expression (dGTEx) project team has published an article on the project in Biopreservation and Biobanking.  

The article, “Targeted Biospecimen Collection to Meet High-Priority Pediatric Health Needs: The Developmental Genotype-Tissue Expression Project,” reports on the advancements and challenges in pediatric-specific tissue collection methodologies, metadata collection, and tissue verification processes. NDRI Director of NIH Initiatives Patrick Van Hoose, PhD, is the lead author of the article, writing with other members of the dGTEx consortium.  

“The dGTEx project is going to revolutionize our understanding of childhood gene expression and the role it plays in pediatric diseases,” said Van Hoose. “We are so proud to be part of this project and to work alongside our partners in the research and organ donation community.” 

The dGTEx project is a National Institutes of Health-funded initiative that seeks to better understand the gene expression patterns that drive human development by studying tissue-specific gene expression during pediatric development of human organs, tissues, and cells. 

As part of dGTEx, NDRI and its Organ Procurement Organization (OPO) partners established the pediatric Biospecimen Procurement Center (BPC), which provides a multi-institutional effort with extensive expertise in pediatric recoveries, research, pathology, imaging, and biobanking. This expertise is essential for providing well-annotated, suitable biospecimens to the dGTEx Laboratory Data Analysis Collection Center (LDACC) for cutting-edge experimental methodologies. 

Read the full article here  

NDRI Biospecimen Procurement Center (BPC) partners for dGTEx: 

• Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia 
• University of Maryland School of Medicine 
• Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital 

 NDRI Laboratory Data Analysis Collection Center (LDACC) partners for dGTEX: 

• Broad Institute 
• Yale School of Medicine 

 Organ Procurement Organization Partners 

• Gift of Life Donor Program  
• Donor Network West  
• Life Gift  
• Center for Organ Recovery and Education (CORE)  
• Connect Life 

dGTEx Funding Institutions:

• National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)
• Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) 
• National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) 
• National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)