This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

This looks like an interesting effort to measure the effect of drugs on genes and tie the results to what is known about the genetics of diseases.



The Connectivity Map: using gene-expression signatures to connect small molecules, genes, and disease.

Science. 2006 Sep 29;313(5795):1929-35.
Lamb J, Crawford ED, Peck D, Modell JW, Blat IC, Wrobel MJ, Lerner J, Brunet JP, Subramanian A, Ross KN, Reich M, Hieronymus H, Wei G, Armstrong SA, Haggarty SJ, Clemons PA, Wei R, Carr SA, Lander ES,
Golub TR.
Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA. justin@broad.mit.edu

To pursue a systematic approach to the discovery of functional connections among diseases, genetic perturbation, and drug action, we have created the first installment of a reference collection of gene-expression profiles from cultured human cells treated with bioactive small molecules, together with pattern-matching software to mine these data.

We demonstrate that this "Connectivity Map" resource can be used to find connections among small molecules sharing a mechanism of action, chemicals and physiological processes, and diseases and drugs. These results indicate the feasibility of the approach and suggest the value of a large-scale community Connectivity Map project.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... &DB=pubmed