# New Approaches for Empowering Studies of Asthma in Populations of African Descent

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO DENVER · 2020 · $2,310,070

## Abstract

Asthma is a complex disease with striking disparities across racial and ethnic groups, which
may be partly attributable to genetic factors. A major goal of the Consortium on Asthma among
African-ancestry Populations in the Americas (CAAPA) has been to discover genes conferring
risk to asthma in populations of African ancestry. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS)
have been successful in identifying genes associated with increased risk of asthma, but there is
a substantial gap between associations discovered by GWAS and understanding how these loci
control disease. A major portion of the `missing heritability' could be due to variants with smaller
effects missed by traditional GWAS thresholds, emphasizing the need for a transition to
integrative genetics, where transcriptome, proteome, methylome and metabolome information
are brought into a unified framework. Our goal in this continuing renewal is to apply an
integrative, multi-omics approach to understand the molecular architecture underlying asthma,
building upon the 5-year CAAPA program, where >16,000 asthmatics and non-asthmatics have
already been GWAS-genotyped, and GWAS and/or whole genome sequencing (WGS) data are
available on more than 100,000 non-CAAPA samples. We propose to test if genetic variants
control development of asthma by regulating gene transcription and expression, DNA
methylation, metabolic profiles, and proteome variation. The specific aims of this
application leverage an international group of investigators with diverse but highly integrated
areas of expertise, and include the following: (1) expand and integrate multi-omic resources for
asthma research in African Diaspora populations and identify novel genetic determinants for risk
of asthma by adding indigenous American and continental African genetic representation in the
African Diaspora catalog, building a multi-omic repository through newly generated
transcriptome, methylome, proteome, and metabolome data from CAAPA asthmatics and
unaffected controls with existing GWAS data from 7 sites in North and South America, the
Caribbean and Africa, and performing integrative analyses; (2) broadly disseminate CAAPA
results through a web-based resource that empowers the asthma research community for new
discoveries; and (3) develop and apply approaches for prioritizing CAAPA results in 3 health
systems biobanks enriched for US minority populations (Nashville, New York City, and the
Rocky Mountain region) by examining genomics (PheWAS) and multi-omics (PrediXcan)
asthma associations identified in CAAPA and non-CAAPA datasets. These studies will advance
our understanding of the molecular basis for asthma among populations of African ancestry.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9837463
- **Project number:** 5R01HL104608-08
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO DENVER
- **Principal Investigator:** Kathleen C Barnes
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $2,310,070
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2011-09-28 → 2022-11-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9837463

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9837463, New Approaches for Empowering Studies of Asthma in Populations of African Descent (5R01HL104608-08). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9837463. Licensed CC0.

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