Two HHS initiatives to study disease causes

The Department of Health and Human Services announced two initiatives to research the genetic and environmental roots of common diseases, such as asthma, arthritis and Alzheimer's disease (AD). The Genetic Association Information Network (GAIN) will establish a partnership between NIH, the Foundation for the NIH and public companies including Pfizer (PFE) and Affymetrix (AFFX) to accelerate genome association studies. PFE will contribute $5 million to launch the partnership and a further $15 million for studies to determine the genetic contributions to five common diseases. AFFX will contribute laboratory resources to study two additional diseases. ...