Supplementary Council Award: NMGN Data Platform development grant (II)

Mice with precisely altered genes will model human diseases so that researchers can study how genetic changes cause illness and test new treatments before they reach patients. This matters because many common diseases—such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer—are influenced by a person’s genetic makeup. Understanding exactly which genes are involved, and how they interact, is extremely difficult to study in human volunteers or in cells alone. Animal research fills that gap, but only where no alternative exists. The National Mouse Genetics Network (NMGN) brings together multiple research groups to create and study mouse models that closely mimic specific human genetic conditions. If the Data Platform succeeds, it will allow researchers across the UK to share genetic data, experimental results, and disease models in a standardised, accessible way. This could accelerate the discovery of disease mechanisms and speed up the development of new diagnostics or therapies. The platform itself is infrastructure—it will not directly produce treatments, but it will make the fundamental science behind those treatments faster and more collaborative. Similar shared data platforms in genomics have already transformed how rare genetic diseases are diagnosed.