deCODE genetics has been awarded a five-year, $23.9-million contract by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the US National Institutes of Health. Under the contract, deCODE will apply its population approach and resources to discover genetic factors associated with susceptibility to certain infectious diseases and with vaccine response.

deCODE will be working with scientists at the University of New Mexico (UNM) to conduct functional validation of biological pathways discovered through its genetics research. The National Centre for Genome Resources (NCGR) will provide bioinformatics resources to make study information and results available to the scientific community, the release says.

deCODE will conduct genome-wide scans in Iceland to search for key genes involved in susceptibility to tuberculosis; adverse reaction to smallpox vaccination; and susceptibility to influenza and certain bacterial infections, such as those that cause pneumonia and meningitis. The identification of genes involved in susceptibility to infectious diseases promises to provide a foothold in the biology of these conditions and a starting point for developing better drugs to treat them and vaccines to prevent them.

C. Rick Lyons of the UNM Health Sciences Centre in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a renowned expert in the study of common pathogens and microbial virulence, will lead the functional work on targets identified by deCODE. The NCGR, a research institute based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and headed by Dr. Stephen Kingsmore, will design and maintain an Immune Response Database (IRDB), an internet-based resource that will enable investigators to query and visualize the results of this project in the context of existing data son the genetics of immune response.

"We are excited by this project and by the opportunity to bring together our expertise and capabilities with those of two leading New Mexico research organizations," Kari Stefansson, CEO of decode said added, "I believe this project reflects the commitment of the NIAID to seek out the best science and apply it to problems that are critical to human health. The international character of this collaboration is also appropriate to the goal - to utilize human genetics to improve our ability to prevent and treat serious challenges to public health around the globe."

deCODE is a biopharmaceutical company applying its discoveries in human genetics to the development of drugs for common diseases.