Solving Medical Mysteries
Through Team Science

About Us

Description

The Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) is a research study that is funded by the National Institutes of Health Common Fund. Its purpose is to bring together clinical and research experts from across the United States to solve the most challenging medical mysteries using advanced technologies.

Through this study, we hope to both help individual patients and families living with the burden of undiagnosed diseases, and contribute to the understanding of how the human body works.

Sites

The UDN is made up of a Coordinating Center, Clinical Sites, and Core Facilities (“Cores”).

The Coordinating Center, which coordinates the work of the UDN, is based at the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School.

The Clinical Sites, where UDN participants are evaluated, are located in 12 cities across the United States:

• Bethesda, MD (NIH Undiagnosed Diseases Program)
• Boston, MA (UDN Clinical Site at Harvard Medical School) *reopened to new applications effective May 2nd, 2023*
• Durham, NC (Duke University and Columbia University)
• Houston, TX (Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children’s Hospital, and Baylor CHI St. Luke’s Medical Center)
• Los Angeles, CA (UCLA Undiagnosed Diseases Clinic)
• Miami, FL (University of Miami School of Medicine) *reopened to new applications effective March 21, 2023*
• Nashville, TN (Vanderbilt Center for Undiagnosed Diseases)
• Philadelphia, PA (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania)
• Salt Lake City, UT (University of Utah – Intermountain West) *reopened to new applications effective May 18th, 2023*
• Seattle, WA (Pacific Northwest Undiagnosed Diseases Clinical Site at University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital) *reopened to new applications effective March 17, 2023*
• Stanford, CA (Center for Undiagnosed Diseases at Stanford)
• St. Louis, MO (Washington University in St. Louis)

At the Clinical Sites, doctors and healthcare providers, like neurologists, immunologists, nephrologists, endocrinologists, and geneticists, come together to help find the cause of participant symptoms.

The Sequencing Core, which provides sequencing services for the UDN, is at Baylor College of Medicine.

The Model Organisms Screening Center, located at Baylor College of Medicine, Washington University in St. Louis, and University of Oregon, helps the network to understand how specific genetic changes contribute to disease by studying these changes in other organisms. The Metabolomics Core, located at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, provides the UDN with advanced tools to study biological markers that might be related to disease.

Reports