Tuesday, July 08, 2008
In 2006, several researchers received grants from NGI. They used the €15,000 grant to conduct a six Andra Waagmeester, PhD candidate at Maastricht University, developed a new method for text mining. Waagmeester: “There is so much professional literature these days, that it has become next to impossible to extract all the meaningful information you need. I am focusing on methods that make it easier to integrate the knowledge derived from this literature into existing biochemical pathways.”
Waagmeester received a fellowship that enabled him to visit the Rebholz group, part of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in Cambridge, United Kingdom. There, he studied text-mining methods designed to enrich existing pathways and incorporated them in a work flow. Waagmeester: “We applied the method to a pathway involving carotenoid metabolism and came up with some interesting new facts.
In addition to the scientific results, my visit to Cambridge gave me the chance to broaden my network.”
Extremely useful
Cecile Janssens, associate professor at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, was also awarded a fellowship by NGI. “I visited the National Office of Public Health Genomics (NOPHG) in Atlanta, United States. This institute studies how developments in the field of genetics are translated into the practical field of health care. Researchers are extremely eager to use the results of genetic research to create medical applications, but it's not that easy. There are already tests for hereditary diseases such as Huntington's disease, but researchers are currently trying to develop tests for common diseases such as coronary heart disease and diabetes. You can buy kits on the Internet that test for type II diabetes, but that's a pretty useless application. If it tests positive, your chances of developing the disease are a few percent higher than they would be if the result was negative. Genetic tests for common diseases are not going to be as accurate as, for example, tests for breast cancer. I studied the possibilities and impossibilities of applying genetic research. Before my visit to Atlanta, I had a hard time finding funding for my research. I hadn't published much on the subject of genetics, so I didn't have much to show for when applying for scholarships. Afterwards, I received a fellowship grant from the Erasmus University Medical Center, and the Vidi grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). So I'd certainly say the NGI grant has been extremely useful to me.