Smokescreen Genotyping Array

Genetic Screening Tool for Tobacco Dependence and Treatment Approaches

Overview

Smoking continues to be a leading preventable cause of disease, disability and death in the United States and worldwide. According to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, smoking was estimated to be responsible for $96 billion in healthcare costs and an additional $97 billion in lost productivity in the United States annually. Due to the highly addictive properties of nicotine, people attempting to quit smoking often fail. Genetics is known to play a role in how strongly tobacco users become addicted and how they respond to different cessation therapies.

The Smokescreen array is a cost-effective multi-purpose tool for nicotine research. The content (SNPs) on the array has been selected to support a variety of research goals related to smoking cessation, drug response and consequences of smoking. In combination with the Smokescreen software, researchers can take advantage of our and statistical genetics services with automated quality control and data analysis pipelines.

Key Features

• Custom Affymetrix Axiom genotyping array with content selected from extensive peer-reviewed research
• Extensive coverage of addiction genes across populations, including rare variants
• Genome-wide content compatible with biobank genotyping
• Access to online software for collaborative data management and analysis

Research Opportunities

The Smokescreen product will be a targeted genotyping and software solution for scientists studying the genetics of nicotine addiction and smoking behavior, including those conducting clinical trials of smoking cessation therapies. The array will have excellent coverage of genomic regions associated with addiction, as well as biological pathways related to the metabolism of nicotine and the brain’s reward system. Large-scale, disease-specific genotyping arrays have had a lot of success following up on prior research. Tobacco addiction scientists will now have a unified genotyping array designed specifically for their research domain.

Customers of Smokescreen will access their study data via a secure software application, built using the team’s statistical computing and genetics expertise. The software will feature automated quality control, data analysis pipelines, and the ability for researchers from different institutions to combine their data for powerful analyses. An important part of this project will be building a framework for biomarker development, which may classify smokers and suggest smoking cessation therapies based on individual characteristics, including genetics and developing state-of-the-art statistical methods that combine all available data to build predictive models. This includes biological information, existing study data, and Smokescreen data as it becomes available.