At its Aug. 8 meeting, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors reaffirmed its commitment to the International Genomics Consortium (IGC), approving a five-year, $5 million grant to the Phoenix-based research group.

To receive the funds, IGC must meet a set of job-creation benchmarks and participate in local research initiatives. The new grant will maintain at current levels the funding that the County has provided to IGC since it relocated from Maryland to metro Phoenix in 2002. Since early 2005 it has been headquartered at the Phoenix Biomedical Campus, within the same building as the Translational Genomics Research Consortium (TGen).

Board Chairman Fulton Brock told the East Valley Tribune that IGC's economic impact on Maricopa County and the group's cutting-edge research made the grant worthwhile. "In addition to the over $40 million in outside funding IGC has brought to our community, we are proud to have scientists researching cures for cancer right here in Maricopa County." he said.

At the heart of the new agreement with Maricopa County is IGC's pledge to provide 60 jobs by 2008 and add 10 jobs per year thereafter, reaching 90 by 2011. IGC Chairman Richard Mallery told the Tribune that the group has already surpassed the 60-job mark.

Additionally, IGC must provide the County with annual reports on its activities, and must assist in disease-prevention efforts of the County Public Health Department.

Along with its support from the County, IGC receives significant funding from the City of Phoenix, Arizona State University, private foundations, and several pharmaceutical and information-technology companies.

IGC's mission is to build on the discoveries of the Human Genome Project in order to fight cancer and other complex genetic diseases. Its primary endeavors to date are the Expression Project for Oncology (expO), which provides free access to clinically annotated cancer tumor data; and the Human Cancer Biospecimen Core Resource (BCR), a component of the national Cancer Genome Atlas Project funded by the National Institutes of Health. Led cooperatively with TGen, the BCR involves collecting tissue samples to be catalogued, checked for quality, and stored with key information about the patient.

---

For more information:

"County renews support for genomic group," East Valley Tribune, 08/08/2007

"County OKs $5 mil for gene research," Arizona Republic, 08/09/2007