MIHG News

Recent News:

Tuesday, September 9
A new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, featuring research from our own Dr. Rampersaud, shows the importance of physical activity in preventing weight gain even in people with a genetic predisposition to obesity...
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Dr. Jeffery Vance's recently submitted report entitled, Genetic Contributions to Parkinson's Disease, posted in the Parkinson Report: Official Journal of the National Parkinson Foundation can be found in the link below. The article begins on page 5 of the document.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW FULL TEXT


Friday, August 1
Dr. John R. Gilbert was recently interviewed and featured in a front page article, Mom's Alzheimer's May Raise Children's Risk on the WebMD website. Dr. Gilbert and other researchers delve deeper into the subject of why children of mothers With late-onset Alzheimer's Disease may be more likely to develop Alzheimer's. "It may be that decreased glucose utilization doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get Alzheimer's disease but that, in conjunction with the wrong type of environment or some other genes that might give you a slight risk, would combine to give it to you," says Gilbert.
Read the full article here


Thursday, July 17
"Mapping Long-Range Regulatory Elements Around BMP Family Genes." Douglas P. Mortlock, assistant professor at the Center for Human Genetics Research in the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics and the Department of Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, will lecture at 11 a.m. in the Mailman Center for Child Development, eighth-floor auditorium. Lunch will follow the event


April 23, 2008
The University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine announced on Monday the creation of the new Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation Department of Human Genetics, with Dr. Jeffery Vance as Chairman. Dr. Margaret A. Pericak-Vance, Director of the MIHG, will receive the first Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation Professor of Human Genetics chair.

April 2, 2008
Researchers from the Morris K. Udall Parkinson Research Center of Excellence and the Miami Institute for Human Genomics, led by Dr. William K. Scott, have uncovered a possible link between pesticide exposure and Parkinson Disease. The results of their study have been published in BMC Neurology.

March 10, 2008
A research team led by Dean Pascal Goldschmidt and the MIHG's Dr. Jeffery Vance recently completed a study that identified the limbic system-associated membrane protein (LSAMP) as a key gene for left main coronary artery disease. The results will appear in the March Annals of Human Genetics. Dr. Liyong Wang is first author on the paper, with Dr. Margaret Pericak-Vance and several researchers at other institutions contributing. Read the full story on the Medical School website or read the abstract on PudMed.

March 2, 2008
The Associated Press recently interviewed Drs. Vance and Pericak-Vance for a piece entitled "Unconventional husband-wife team head Miami genetics institute." The story can be found in the AP archives here.

September 10, 2007
Dr. Jonathan Haines, Director Center for Human Genetics Research, Vanderbilt University Medical Center who delivered a talk entitled, Making Progress in Complex Genetic Disease: Multiple Sclerosis and Macular Degeneration. Dr. Haines described approaches to disease gene detection and specifically as it pertained to the discovery of the IL7R gene that contributes to risk for multiple sclerosis.

July 29, 2007
MIHG Director Margaret Pericak-Vance, PhD and collaborators from Vanderbilt University, the University of California at San Francisco, Duke and the University of Cambridge, announced that they discovered a new gene responsible for multiple sclerosis (MS). After decades with no new breakthroughs in the search for MS genes, the identification of the Interleukin 7 receptor alpha chain (ILR7) as a significant risk factor for the disease gives those with MS and their loved ones reason to celebrate. Though the discovery will likely lead to the development of better diagnostics and treatments, these will take some years to develop.

April 25, 2007
MIHG Autism research team has identified a new region on chromosome 12 which likely harbors a gene related to autism risk. They published these important new findings Molecular Psychiatry.

April 10, 2007
MIHG Researchers discover link between decreased Parkinson disease risk and smoking and coffee drinking.

January 1, 2007
University of Miami Miller School of Medicine Dean Pascal Goldschmidt announces the establishment of the Miami Institute for Human Genomics (MIHG).