Programs & Initiatives
In 2010 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund launched the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project to help scientists understand how different genes might lead to certain types of diseases. NIH awarded the tissue procurement component of GTEx Project to NDRI. The following year, we partnered with organ procurement organizations (OPOs) and tissue banks across the country to collect more than 80,000 biospecimens, providing extensive phenotypic data for all samples.
By the end of the donor accrual phase of the project in 2015, NDRI TSS recovered tissues from 654 organ and tissue transplant donors. We collected as many as 32 tissue types from each donor, and each tissue was extensively genotyped. The data is accessible through a portal supported by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI).
This vast collection effort required the expertise of multiple institutions, including:
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)
Leidos
The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
The Van Andel Research Institute
University of Miami Brain Endowment Bank
- Kristin Ardlie, PhD, Director, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT
NDRI is a Not-For-Profit (501c3) Corporation.