About us

Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Academia Sinica

The establishment of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences (IBMS) in Academia Sinica was aimed for the research into mechanisms leading to human diseases, especially those diseases common to our country. Thus four divisions namely: (1) cancer research; (2) cardiovascular research; (3) infectious diseases and (4) neuroscience research have been established at the beginning. Later (5) an epidemiology and public health research division and (6) a structural biology division were incorporated to look into the factors involved in deseases globally and in a detailed manner.

  After the decoding of the human genome last year, research into the genes involved in human *health* and *disease* become a trend. The research experience accumulated in IBMS in the field of human diseases is just in the right position to meet the challenge during this postgenomic era. The establishment of genomic/proteomic center by Academia Sinica in the coming year is the catalyst that allowed the PI's of IBMS to organize behind the *genomics medicine program* for the research into the mechanisms of diseases that are particularly important to our country.

   IBMS has evolved into a premier research institute in Taiwan. The institute has grown rapidly both in personnel and facilities during the past decade since its inception. A major goal is to achieve a level of scientific excellence that meets international standards. IBMS works hard to create a research environment conducive to freedom in creative thinking and breakthrough research.

National Genotyping Center

National Genotyping Center (NGC) was established in 2001 with grant from National Science Council as a key component for the National Research Program for Genomic Medicine. The purpose of this facility is to provide high throughput genotyping platforms for research scientist in Taiwan. In the post-genome era, a high throughput genotyping facility is a must for the success of Genomic Medicine research. In the first phase, there are two genotyping technology platforms established in NGC. One, based on fluorescent capillary electrophoresis, is used for microsatellite (short tandem repeat polymorphism, STRP) analysis; the other, based on MALDI-TOF (matrix-assisted laser desoption/ionization - time of flight) spectrometry, is used for SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) analysis. NGC comprises five major groups in the experimental part: (1) SNP Genotyping, (2) STRP Genotyping, (3) Sample Management, (4) Primer Management, and (5) Research and Development. In addition, groups of Quality Assurance and Bioinformatics were established to support the operation of NGC.

   NGC has provided genotyping service in a total of 72 different projects for 22 different investigators. For the past year (March 2003-April 2004), a total of 31,969,694 SNP and 3,535,049 STRP genotyping have been performed in NGC. Notably, a gene for a mouse model resembling human maple syrup urine disease has been identified, and a gene associated with carbamazepine-induced Stevens-Johnson syndrome has been discovered.
 

Adaptive Internet Intelligent Agents (AIIA) Lab, Institute of Information Sciences, Academia Sinica

AIIA lab aims at the development of an effective data-mining tool for biologists by integrating the technologies in information search agents, database management, and graphical data visualization. With this tool, biologists can accelerate interpretation of genomic information, prediction of protein 3D structures and functions, design and discovery of new drugs, etc. As a result, the success of this project will significantly improve conventional practices of biological/genomic research by reducing considerable amounts of time and resources and increasing the chance of breakthrough discoveries. In this project, we will apply object-oriented modular design for the information agents so that the agents for different tasks of knowledge search and organization can be created and reused by "customization". The customization can be conducted through a user-friendly toolbox, which provides an intelligent human-machine interface with machine learning capabilities. Biologists who cannot program a computer can easily customize a new agent for their particular information needs at hand with the toolbox. This project will also develop a distributed resource-sharing environment so that biologists around the world can share and exchange the services provided by their agents.

Papers

Human Genetics

ENU mutagenesis identifies mice with mitochondrial branched-chain aminotransferase deficiency resembling human maple syrup urine disease Wu JY, Kao HJ, Li SC, Stevens R, Hillman S, Millington D, Chen YT J Clin Invest. 2004 Feb;113(3):434-40.

Medical genetics: a marker for Stevens-Johnson syndrome Chung WH, Hung SI, Hong HS, Hsih MS, Yang LC, Ho HC, Wu JY, Chen YT. Nature. 2004 Apr 1;428(6982):486.

Mapping of psoriasis to 17q terminus W-L Hwu, C-F Yang, Cathy S J Fann, C-L Chen, T-F Tsai, Y-H Chien, S-C Chiang, C-H Chen, S-I Hung, J-Y Wu, and Y-T Chen. J Med Genet. 2005 ; 42(2):152.

HLA*5801 allele as a genetic marker for severe cutaneous adverse reactions caused by allopurinol Hung SI,Chung WH,Liou LB,Chu CC,Lin M,Huang HP,Lin YL,Lan JL,Yang LC,Hong HS,Chen MJ,Lai PC,Chen CH,Fann CSJ,Wu YJ,Chen YT Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005 Mar 15;102(11):4134-9

R1193Q of SCN5A, a Brugada and long QT mutation, is a common polymorphism in Han Chinese HW Hwang, DM Niu, BT Hwang, JJ Chen, YJ Lin, RC Shieh, MT Lee, SI Hung, JY Wu, YT Chen. J Med Genet. 2005 ; 42:e7.

A novel functional VKORC1 promoter polymorphysm is associated with inter-vidual and inter-ethnic differences in wafarin sensitivity Yuan HY, Chen JJ, Lee MT Michel, Chen YF, Charng MJ, LU MJ, Hung CR, Wei CY, Chen CH, Wu YJ, Chen YT Hum Mol Genet. 2005 Jul 1;14(13):1745-51

Type II Collagen Gene Variants and Inherited Osteonecrosis of the Femoral Head Liu YF, Chen WM, Lin YF , Yang RC , Lin MW,Li LH, Chang YH , Jou YS, Lin PY , Su JS Huang SF, Hsiao KJ , Fann CJS, Hwang HW, Chen YT, Tsai SF New Engl J Med 352: 2294-2301, 2005.

HLA-B genotyping to detect carbamazepine-induced Stevens-Johnson syndrome: implications for personalizing medicine Hung SI, Chung WH, Chen YT Invited review Personalized Medicine, 2:225-237, 2005.

Genetic susceptibility to carbamazepine-induced cutaneous adverse drug reactions Hung SI, Chung WH Jee SH, Chen WC, Chang YT, Lee WR, Hu SL, Wu MT, Chen GS, Wong TW, Hsiao PF, Chen WH, Shih HY, Fan WH, Wei CY, Lou YH, Huang YL, Lin JJ, Chen YT Pharmacogenetics and Genomics,in press, 2005.

Association study of genetic polymorphisms of SLC2A10 gene and type 2 diabetes in Taiwanese population Lin WH, Chuang LM, Chen CH, Yeh JI, Hsieh PS, Cheng CH, Chen YT Diabetologia, in press, 2005

Bioinformatics

Reconfigurable Web wrapper agents for biological information integration Chun-Nan Hsu, Chia-Hui Chang, Chang-Huain Hsieh, Jiann-Jyh Lu and Chien-Chi Chang. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 56(5):505-517, Special Issue on Bioinformatics, 2005

Reconfigurable Web wrapper agents. Chia-Hui Chang, Harianto Siek, Jiann-Jyh Lu, Jen-Jie Chiou and Chun-Nan Hsu.
IEEE Intelligent Systems, 18(5):34-40, Special Issue on Web Information Integration, September/October 2003.

Finite-State Transducers for Semi-Structured Text Mining Chun-Nan Hsu and Chien-Chi Chang. In Proceedings of IJCAI-99 Workshop on Text Mining: Foundations, Techniques and Applications, Stockholm, Sweden, 1999. Page 38-49.