A new four-year, $3.26 million grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), establishes the first Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) site in the New York metropolitan area. Patients of all ages with difficult-to-diagnose diseases can apply to have their cases studied intensively by the new Mount Sinai Center for Undiagnosed Diseases using state-of-the-art genomic approaches as soon as the beginning of 2025.
These funds expand the work of the Undiagnosed Diseases Program, previously sponsored by The Mindich Child Health and Development Institute at Mount Sinai through private philanthropy. The co-Principal Investigators are Bruce D. Gelb, MD, Gogel Family Chair and Director, The Mindich Child Health and Development Institute, and Professor of Pediatrics, and Genetics and Genomic Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; and Manisha Balwani, MD, MS, Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, and Medicine, at Icahn Mount Sinai and Chief, Medical Genetics and Genomics, Mount Sinai Health System.
They aim not only to provide this unique resource to patients in the New York metropolitan region, but also to engage communities underrepresented in medical research to assure that the UDN's capabilities are made available equitably. To help improve diversity, Drs. Gelb and Balwani are partnering with the Institute for Family Health.
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