AGT researchers net $4.4m NIH grant

Researchers associated with Victorian-based AGT Biosciences have landed a $AUD4.4 million grant from the US National Institutes of Health to fund its human gene discovery research.

The grant, awarded over a period of five years, will be shared between Prof Ahmed Kissebah of the Medical College of Wisconsin, Dr John Blangero of AGT and the Texas-based Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, and the AGT team at Deakin University, Geelong.

Prof Greg Collier, AGT's CEO and managing director, said in a statement that the grant was a strong affirmation of AGT's approach to solving problems of complex human diseases.

He said the grant would support a trilateral collaboration between Kissebah (population genetics), Blangero's team (statistical genomics) and AGT's eXpress technology platform.