The first meeting of the Scientific Committee of the 101 Genomes Marfan project (P101GM) will take place on January 19th, 2018 in Brussels, Belgium.
The P101GM is the first pilot project of The 101 Genomes Foundation, a private Foundation that was created in November 2017 by Ludivine Verboogen & Romain Alderweireldt (Chair of the VASCERN Ethics WG and ePAG representative for the Association Belge du Syndrome de Marfan) who are parents of a child with Marfan syndrome. Its aim is to improve the lives of people affected by rare diseases by supporting research and development through the creation of a bioinformatics platform containing genomic and phenotypic cross-data from a cohort of 101 patients.
The P101GM, dedicated to patients with Marfan syndrome, will aim to offer scientists a bioinformatics platform containing the genomic and phenotypic data of a starting cohort of 101 patients with Marfan syndrome, in the hopes of better understanding the variability and intensity of clinical manifestations seen in this disease. By using the most innovative technological tools currently available, it is hoped that researchers will be able to identify potential modifier genes (genes that affect the expression of one or more other genes) that may play a role in the severity of cardiovascular, skeletal and ocular manifestations seen in patients with Marfan syndrome, which could ultimately lead to the development of new therapeutic approaches.
The following participants will be present at this first meeting, organised by Ludivine Verboogen and Romain Alderweireldt: Prof Julie De Backer (Chair of the VASCERN HTAD WG), Prof. Anne De Paepe, Prof. Catherine Boileau (AP-HP, Bichat-Claude Bernard Hospital, Paris, France), Dr. Guillaume Smits, Prof. Bart Loeys (member of HTAD WG) and his collaborator Aline Verstraeten, Prof. Paul Coucke, Dr. Marjolijn Renard, Dr. Michel Verboogen, Me Bruno Fonteyn, Annemie T’Seyen and Julien Wolff.
To find out more information about this exciting new project, click here