Bioinformatics Research Gets $15-Million Dollar Boost

A $15-million grant from the National Institutes of Health has extended the life of a collaborative biomedical research project involving six Kentucky universities, led by the University of Louisville. The research is being conducted in the area of bioinformatics, which is the study of how computer science can better track research in molecular biology.U-of-L Medical School Dean Edward Halperin says as more is known in the field, doctors will be able to make more precise diagnoses.“If you want to look at pattern recognition in genes, if you want to understand whether it’s a unique gene, if you want to whether the prognosis of bronchogenic carcinoma is different in one patient than another, you have to process such large amounts of data that you need a new science to do so: bioinformatics," says Halperin.U-of-L has partnered with the University of Kentucky, and four other state universities in the research.The program began in 2001, and the new funding extends it until 2013.