# Beyond Boundaries: ELSI and the Complex Relationships between Infectious and Genetic Diseases

> **NIH NIH RM1** · JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $547,847

## Abstract

This supplement application is requesting to extend the project period by 12 months to allow for the
productive closeout of the Johns Hopkins University Center of Excellence in ELSI Research, Bridging
Infectious Diseases, Genomics & Society (BRIDGES).
Project Summary
Considerable attention needs to be paid to the ethical, legal, social implications (ELSI)—for
individuals, groups or the larger society—of using genomic information in the management of
infectious disease. Our CEER (Bridging Infectious Disease, Genomics & Society – BRIDGES1) was
designed to examine the ethical, legal, social, historical and policy issues confronting the
incorporation of genomics in the prevention, outbreak control, and treatment of a range of
infectious diseases. Our transdisciplinary research plan was organized around three discrete but
related program areas, each of which included one pilot project. In Program Area 1 (Implications for
Research), the pilot project addressed the impact of research on genetic variation in HIV and HCV
transmission in cohorts of at-risk urban populations. In Program Area 2, (Implications for Public
Health Policy), the pilot project analyzed the role and impact of advances in “vaccinomics” for
informing population-based prevention. In Program Area 3 (Implications for Clinical Practice), the
pilot project assessed the application of genomics in the clinical management of acute, high
consequence infectious diseases. We also included a robust career development plan. Our research
and education plans were designed to inform and influence the future research agenda—even as the
science is still developing—so that the benefits of genomic applications to infectious disease are
maximized while potential harms to individuals and populations are minimized. One of the
observations emerging from our pilot work is that there are a growing number of examples of “genetic
diseases” with an infectious component, and of “infectious diseases” with a genetic component.
Increasingly, genomics informs how we think about infections, and microbes/pathogens influence the
phenotypic expression of genetic variation. At the same time that our understanding of the science is
evolving, advances in data sciences, molecular epidemiology and gene editing technologies, and
more importantly their uses together, require a reassessment of categories of technologies and how
the technologies are regulated and used. These shifting boundaries - between infectious disease and
genetic disease, and between uses of emerging technologies - are creating an important and, as yet,
understudied area of inquiry. In this administrative supplement, we propose to close out the
work undertaken during BRIDGES1, leverage the infrastructure and relationships built in BRIDGES1
to address the current pandemic, and generate research ideas for future grant proposals that will
ensure the sustainability of the work we began under BRIDGES1. To ensure the sustainability of the
work undertaken as part of...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10134594
- **Project number:** 3RM1HG009038-04S1
- **Recipient organization:** JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** GAIL GELLER
- **Activity code:** RM1 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $547,847
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2016-05-16 → 2022-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10134594

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10134594, Beyond Boundaries: ELSI and the Complex Relationships between Infectious and Genetic Diseases (3RM1HG009038-04S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10134594. Licensed CC0.

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