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	ISB Professor Ilya Shmulevich, PhD    Principal Investigator of ISB's Center for Systems Analysis of the Cancer Regulome		ISB PLAYS KEY ROLE IN NATIONAL EFFORT TO MAP CANCER GENOME      ISB has been tapped for leadership by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in one of the most significant endeavors since the Human Genome Project: The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA).      The Institute has been awarded nearly $8 million to help identify new drug targets and therapies for many of the most lethal cancers through the TCGA project, which is a comprehensive effort to map the genomic changes that occur in cancers. The effort, which is being run by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), will result in the mapping of more than 20 different forms of the disease. More than 500,000 Americans die from cancer every year.      The funding will be used to launch the Center for Systems Analysis of the Cancer Regulome at ISB, which is being led by ISB Professor Ilya Shmulevich. The term "regulome" refers to all the components of a cell that regulate its activity. Researchers in the Center will develop innovative bioinformatic and computational tools to analyze data generated by the TCGA Consortium, with the eventual goal of identifying new drug targets and therapies for cancer. The lab of Professor Wei Zhang, from the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, will collaborate with ISB in this effort.      Other Genome Data Analysis Centers selected by the NCI and NHGRI include: Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA;		Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY; University of California, Santa Cruz, CA; University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX. "Systems-level analyses of the data, involving mathematical modeling and engineering approaches, will improve our understanding of the molecular disruptions that occur in cancer," Shmulevich said. "ISB has been pioneering such approaches, which will be translated into personalized cancer therapies."      NCI and NHGRI plan to use approximately $275 million in Recovery Act and non-Recovery Act funding over the next two years to drive the TCGA project. SYSTEMS APPROACHES TO COMPLEX DISEASES: ASTHMA According to the National Center for Environmental Health, one in four Americans suffers from asthma or allergies. Every day in America: 40,000 people miss school or work because of asthma, 30,000 people have an asthma attack, 5,000 people experience asthma-related emergency room visits, 1,000 people are admitted to the hospital due to asthma, 11 people die from asthma.      In addition, asthma rates in children under the age of five increased more than 160 percent from 1980 to 1994.      To help address this challenge, the
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