As the Human and Molecular Genetics Center (HMGC) enters its 8th year, we have had many changes in faculty. Consequently, this report is an update rather than an annual report, which lags behind our current status. In short, the HMGC is stronger than ever and we continue to excel in a difficult NIH climate and with the addition of five new faculty members I anticipate the growth to continue. Before introducing our new Faculty, I would like to thank Drs. Sun-Wei Guo (Pediatrics, and Max McGee National Research Center for Juvenile Diabetes), Anne E. Kwitek (Physiology) and Kee-Hong Kim (Medicine) for their years of productive contributions to the HMGC. They have all left with promotions and new opportunities. I wish them continued success. Internally, Dr. Elena Semina (Pediatrics) has left the core HMGC faculty to build her section in Developmental Genetics inside the Children’s Research Institute, but she remains a member of the HMGC as a collaborating faculty member.

Since our last annual report (2005-2006) we welcomed to the core HMGC faculty: Drs. Michael Garrett (Medicine), Aoy Tomita-Mitchell (Surgery-Cardiothoracic Pediatrics), Michael Mitchell (Surgery-Cardiothoracic Pediatrics), Leah Solberg Woods (Pediatrics) and Russell Wilke (Medicine and Pharmacology). These five faculty members bring new dimensions to the HMGC and will enable us to pursue grants in new areas as well as expanding our intellectual capital. The core HMGC Faculty now stands at 20 (2 Professors, 8 Associate Professors and 10 Assistant Professors), which is the largest number we have had. With the faculty distribution markedly outside the professor rank, it is clear this faculty has yet to reach its peak potential. Yet, the faculty is ranked in the top 12 Genetic Departments nationally and brings in the third largest amount of research money into MCW. Over the last 7 years, our core faculty has worked on a large number of grants to support the overall institution and many have been funded. The cumulative total of NIH grants awarded to MCW with at least one HMGC faculty member participating has now reached $170 million.

In June of 2007, Michael Olivier (Physiology) led, along with Ahmed Kissebah (Medicine), a team of HMGC faculty: Soumitra Ghosh (Pediatrics), Anne Kwitek (formerly in Physiology), Jozef Lazar (Dermatology) and John Blangero (San Antonio) in the development and submission of a Center of Excellence in Genomic Sciences (CEGS) application to the National Institute of Human Genome Research. This is the first programmatic grant submitted entirely by HMGC faculty ushering in a new phase in the HMGC. Our faculty has now reached a level of national and international recognition that we can develop and compete for programmatic grants. I anticipate there will be many more program grants coming from the HMGC over the next few years.

In September 2007, Ulrich Broeckel (Pediatrics) was named the new director of the Individualized Medicine Institute (IMI) which was developed in conjunction with the Department of Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin (CHW), and Children’s Research Institute (CRI). Under his leadership, the HGMC/IMI along with Pediatrics and CHW signed a strategic alliance with Affymetrix. This alliance will enable us to place 1 million genotypes on 5,000 children per year for the next five years, to help bring individualized genetic data to clinical care.

The faculty continues to publish in top journals, and to present at national and international meetings. They are also actively participating in the training of residents, graduate students, medical students, undergraduates and even a handful of high school students. The training success and the reputations of our faculty have begun to attract the attention of people from around the world interested in training with us. Each year we are receiving an increasing number of unsolicited inquires from top students. I hope you will have a chance to peruse the laboratory pages of our faculty. We look forward to the approaching year with optimism that HMGC will continue on its road to successfully creating new knowledge and applying this knowledge to developing new medical applications to improve health care. I would like to close by thanking the faculty along with their students, staff and fellows for creating a powerful research engine and an exciting intellectual environment.

   Jacob, Howard Ph.D.
   Professor of Physiology
   Director, Human and Molecular Genetics Center
   Warren Knowles Chair in Genetics
   Associate Section Chief of Genetics, Children's Hospital of Wisconsin
   Medical College of Wisconsin