DHFMR grants awards for collaborative research at AUB Medical Center

Of the seven research centers in the Middle East selected by the Dubai Harvard Foundation for Medical Research to contribute to the two research teams, AUB is the only institution to have researchers contributing to both collaborative research projects. Through its Collaborative Research Center Program, DHFMR funds exceptional researchers whose innovative approaches will significantly impact medical, biomedical or translational research relevant to the Middle East.

The 2009 grant recipients at AUB are Dr. Ghassan Dbaibo, a professor at AUBMC's Department of Pediatrics and a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases; Dr. Fadi Bitar, director of the Service of Pediatric Cardiology and associate professor of pediatrics; and Dr. Georges Nemer, an associate professor of biochemistry whose work focuses on the genetic and molecular bases of congenital heart diseases (CHD) in the Lebanese population. Grant recipients are expected to build on established collaborations between research laboratories at Harvard Medical School and Middle East based counterparts with the goal of ultimately developing breakthrough scientific knowledge and pioneering research in the region.

Grant recipient Dr. Ghassan Dbaibo (AUB BS '82, MD '86) is a member of the Collaborative Research Network on Primary Immunodeficiency Diseases (PIDs). Dr. Dhaibo is working with colleagues at four other research sites in the Middle East to establish a sustainable network with the potential to identify novel genes that cause PIDs, a group of genetically determined disorders that affect the development and/or function of the immune system. Although the incidence of PIDs is estimated to be 1:2,000 in the western world, because most forms of PIDs are inherited as autosomal recessive traits, they are expected to be more common in areas with high rates of consanguinity such as the Middle East.

"The team has already mapped a locus for a novel heretofore undescribed PID syndrome in a large Kuwaiti family that demonstrates unequivocally the power of the proposed collaborative network in identifying novel genes that cause PID," says Dbaibo. He expects that the network's collaborative research will foster the diagnostic and research capabilities at each of the Middle East centers and lead to a marked improvement in awareness, diagnosis, treatment, and investigation of PIDs in the region.

In the second research initiative funded by DHFMR, Discovery of Genetic Causes for Human Congenital Malformations. AUB grantees Dr. Fadi Bitar (AUB BS '82, MD '86) and Dr. Georges Nemer (AUB BS '92) are working with partners in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the Harvard Medical School in the United States to decipher the genetics of congenital diseases in the Middle East.

In the last six years, Dr. Nemer, Dr. Bitar, who established the Children's Cardiac Registry Center (CCRC) in 1999—the first registry of patients with congenital heart disease (CHD) in Lebanon—and their colleagues have collected more than 600 DNA samples from patients at the CCRC to discover the genetic and molecular causes for human malformations. The goal of the Congenital Heart Disease Genetic Program (CHDGP) that Bitar codirects, explains Nemer, is "to link mutations in genes encoding transcription factors to CHD," a disease that occurs in 1% of live births and is the major risk factor for early morbidity in newborn infants. By focusing on a list of ten genes that are not yet proven to be linked to CHD, Nemer and Bitar hope to enhance our understanding of the role of these particular genes in causing CHD.

In 2008, Dr. Rose-Mary N. Boustany, professor of Pediatrics and Biochemistry, received the first DHFMR multiyear research grant to pursue her

research on Batten Disease.