arcOGEN
A new proposal to carry out a genome-wide association scan (GWAS) on osteoarthritis cases has very recently been awarded a grant by arc. This project is a direct result of the October 2006 Osteoarthritis Horizon Scanning Meeting held at the University of Warwick. The project has the acronym arcOGEN, which stands for arc Osteoarthritis GENetics.
The project is being led by Dr John Loughlin (recently elected to the chair of Musculoskeletal Research at Newcastle University) and is a national, collaborative exercise, with the following co-investigators:
| Co-investigator | Institution |
| Professor Stuart Ralston | University of Edinburgh |
| Dr Gillian Wallis and | University of Manchester |
| Professor Bill Ollier | |
| Professor Mike Doherty | University of Nottingham |
| Dr Panos Deloukas | Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge |
| Professor Tim Spector, | King’s College London |
| Dr Ana Valdes and | |
| Dr Kay Chapman | University of Oxford |
| Professor Andrew Carr and | |
| Dr Ele Zeggini | |
| Dr Nigel Arden | University of Southampton |
The investigators will perform a GWAS using over 500,000 SNPs on 8,000 osteoarthritis cases and they will compare allele frequencies to 6,000 controls already genotyped. The cases have severe hip or knee osteoarthritis, with over 4,500 already collected and the remainder to be collected by October 2008. The genotyping of all cases will be completed by the summer of 2009 and after analysis and manuscript preparation the genotyping data will be made freely available to all at the end of 2009 as an open international resource. DNA from the new case collection will also be available to investigators who have an appropriate research proposal.
The project will cost approximately £2.2 million and is the largest single project yet funded by arc. The sheer size of the study will place osteoarthritis researchers in the enviable position of understanding to a very high degree the genetic architecture of this common arthritis. It is anticipated that the genetic data from the study will assist in the diagnosis and prognosis of the disease, will offer genetic markers for the selection of patients for clinical trials, and will assist new drug development by providing insights in to disease mechanisms and pathways.
