Initiatives

AMDeC’s initiatives to further biomedical research fall into several broad categories including advocacy, education, funding, collaboration, data dissemination and networking.  Please click on any of the initiatives below to learn more.

InTraGen

To translate scientific results into clinical advances, medical research must harness the combined power of many clinical and research institutions. AMDeC’s Integrated Translational Genomics (InTraGen) program will build on a decade of work by our consortium to assemble a pre-competitive infrastructure that encourages joint research and an information superhighway for the exchange of biomedical information.  

InTraGen will:

Improve medical diagnostics and therapeutics by providing computational and analytical tools to merge and analyze a variety of personal data, including gene expression, protein, and clinical information.

Tap the combined resources of many New York State institutions and their diverse populations by allowing rapid recruitment of many subjects with specific attributes into a clinical trial.

Accelerate genetically based clinical trials and reduce their cost by genotyping in advance a diverse group of nearly 20,000 people, both to supply matched controls and to assess whether proposed studies are likely to be definitive.

Attract talent and funding to New York State, by providing a pre-competitive infrastructure that lets researchers and biotechnology partners harness the state's rich resources to translate basic science into medical advances.

Generate data to inspire new products and licensing opportunities for New York State institutions and to provide a testing ground for targeted approaches to disease.

For more information about AMDeC’s InTraGen program, please click here.

Researchers: To apply for access to the InTraGen database, please click here.

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New York Cancer Project

The New York Cancer Project (NYCP) is a 20 year longitudinal study following an ethnically diverse cohort of over 18,000 New Yorkers.  NYCP is designed to help scientists tease apart the genetic and environmental factors that account for differences in cancer and other multi-variable disease risk and outcomes in different ethnic groups.  This project marks an unprecedented collaboration of New York’s world-class academic medical centers, community hospitals, and the New York City Government.

•         If you would like to learn about recent New York Cancer Project updates and the project background, please click here.

•         For New York Cancer Project participants who would like to receive another copy of the most recent follow up questionnaire (Fall 2006), please click here.

•         For a list of studies utilizing NYCP data, please click here. 

•         For researchers interested in learning more about the New York Cancer Project rationale and data set (including grant application information), please click here. To apply for access to NYCP data, available on a de-identified basis as part of the InTraGen database, please click here.

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Shared Use Mouse Facility

Laboratory mice represent an experimental key to understanding human genetics and biology.  Improved and efficient access to mice that are reliably disease-free is therefore of great value to the biomedical research community. AMDeC launched an effort to develop a shared use mouse breeding facility to create significant savings and free up scarce resources for other research priorities at participating members institutions. 

Along with reducing the overall cost of housing and breeding research mice for participating member institutions (including Mount Sinai Medical Center, North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, New York University Medical Center and The Rockefeller University), the Shared Use Mouse Facility (Mouse House) will further our mission by spurring economic development through the advancement of a new biotech center in New York State and by helping to attract the best and brightest genomics researchers to New York.

Since securing $10 million in state funds for the capital development of the Mouse House in fall 2006, AMDeC has been working to identify a commercial partner to breed and raise mice. Once identified through an RFP process, our partner will participate in the conceptual design phase.

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Reduce Obesity and Diabetes (ROAD)

AMDeC’s Reduce Obesity and Diabetes Program (ROAD) is a five year study examining the effects of supervised exercise and health education on Type II diabetes and obesity risk factors among middle school students in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Nassau County public schools.  ROAD aims to advance understanding of the development, treatment, and prevention of these two chronic and inter-related diseases, both of which are reaching epidemic proportions among adolescent and minority populations.  ROAD combines metabolic and molecular genetic screening for disease risk factors with a multi-ethnic, school-based intervention.  Preliminary studies show that such an intervention reduces the risk of developing these two chronic diseases and their co-morbidities.

Funded with a $5,000,000 grant from the Starr Foundation, research teams from five AMDeC member institutions have teamed together to recruit 6th, 7th, and 8th grade participants of Hispanic-American, African-American, Asian-American, and Caucasian-American backgrounds from partner middle schools. Each student in the study will participate in a 14-session health course integrated into their regular health and science classes, along with additional exercise classes. This curriculum will give students the necessary tools to reduce their risk factors for obesity and Type II diabetes and lead healthier lives.

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New Yorkers for the Advancement of Medical Research (NYAMR)

AMDeC is a founding member of NYAMR, a coalition of New York State–based disease advocacy groups, university research centers and biotech industry leaders that have assembled to lead a charge to achieve legislation that would affirm and support scientific research involving embryonic stem cells and other DNA therapies.  In 2003 and 2004, legislation of this kind, led by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, passed the New York State Assembly by a wide margin.

NYAMR believes that New York State should take its rightful place as a leader in this area of research that holds great promise for the future.

For more information, please visit the NYAMR website.

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Center on Bioterrorism

Through AMDeC, the New York research community has been able to collaboratively respond to pressing public health issues. In the aftermath of September 11th and the ensuing specter of bioterrorism, an immediate need was recognized to again mobilize the resources of New York’s biomedical research community. Utilizing our unique position as a consortium of world class health research centers throughout New York, AMDeC created a Center on Bioterrorism.   AMDeC’s Center on Bioterrorism marshals the scientific, educational, and clinical bioterrorism-related resources of our 28 affiliated institutions and works to establish public-private partnerships with government, academia, and industry to support the public authorities and public health officials who have front line responsibility for responding to the nation’s bioterrorism challenges.

AMDeC’s Center on Bioterrorism is a lead participant in the Northeast Biodefense Center (NBC), a coalition of nearly 30 pre-eminent biomedical research institutions in the region.  The NBC is part of a national network of eight Regional Centers of Excellence funded by the National Institutes of Health and was selected for a multi-year federal grant in excess of $9 million per year.  AMDeC helped develop the NBC’s intranet, a private, secure site for NBC members to communicate and collaborate online. The site provides tools for building a publications library, enabling distance learning, and tailoring resources to the needs of individual users.

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BioResource Network (BRN)

Completed as a pilot in 2003, AMDeC’s BioResource Network (BRN) is a one-time snapshot of biomedical research being conducted in the New York region.  The BRN website provides an overview of institutional data on a subset of AMDeC members.  These data include information on academic departments, research centers, core facilities and clinical trials.  Also available via the BRN website is a regional overview including research capabilities within a select number of disease areas such as AIDS, cancer and neuroscience.

To access the BRN, click here.

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New York Early Lung Cancer Action Program (NY-ELCAP)

Originally conceived as the New York Early Lung Cancer Action Program (NY-ELCAP) in 1999 when lung cancer represented the leading cause of cancer mortality in the United States, AMDeC brought together researchers from 11 affiliated institutions throughout New York State to use state-of-the-art computed tomography (CT) screenings in to study 6,366 men and women 60 years of age or older who smoked at least one pack of cigarettes a day for 10 years.  Study participants had no prior history of cancer other than non-melanotic skin cancer.  NY-ELCAP emphasized exploring minority populations disproportionately affected by the disease.

The study concluded that annual computed tomography is an effective diagnostic tool for detecting early-stage lung cancer in smokers and for reducing mortality rates. Among the cases diagnosed with lung cancers, 98% of cancers were screen-detected and only 2% presented clinically in the interval between annual screening exams. The results of this study, led by Principal Investigator Dr. Claudia Henschke of Weill Medical College, were published last fall in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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