money, money

by Beyond Lab

Research is extremely expensive -- even more than drug development. NIH is throwing $8 million to epigenome and human disease studies, starting next year. Is this a big amount? No. absolutely not. it is just a few R01 grants. Epigenetic studies require a lot of new/expensive equipment and techniques, such as microarray, sequencing. in many cases, new methodologies have to be developed. Also, when focusing on human diseases, it needs more resource input.

More importantly, epigenetics is an expanding area with new markers appearing one by one. Which one of the epigenetic markers is more important? How could $8 million be balanced properly to all these markers?? WE NEED MORE!!!

Hopefully this is just the beginning.