The History of HUGO

The Human Genome Organisation
History, Purposes and Membership – Dr. Victor A. McKusick, 1989, Genomics

The Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) was conceived in late April 1988, at the first meeting on genome mapping and sequencing at Cold Spring Harbor. For some time, as the genome initiatives got under way in individual nations, the need for an international coordinating scientific body had been under discussion. The idea of HUGO was particularly Sydney Brenner's. He also suggested the name of the organization and its rather felicitous acronym.

At a rump session called to discuss the proposal at Cold Spring Harbor on April 30, 1988, Victor McKusick (Baltimore) was asked to serve as founding president. A Founding Council was assembled from among those at the Cold Spring Harbor meeting, supplemented by others, to a total of 42 scientists from 17 countries. In early September 1988, 31 of these scientists met in Montreux, Switzerland, at a hotel within sight of the historic Chateau de Chillon. (FIG 2) The members of the Founding Council are indicated by an asterisk in the list of HUGO members at the end. The officers elected at Montreux were as follows: Victor A. McKusick, President; Walter Bodmer, Jean Dausset, and Kenichi Matsubara, Vice-Presidents; John Tooze, Secretary; Walter Gilbert, Treasurer (resigned February, 15, 1989); and Charles Cantor, Malcolm Ferguson-Smith, Leroy Hood, Lennart Philipson, and Frank Ruddle, Elected Members to Executive Committee.

The Founding Council of HUGO, in Montreux, September 7, 1988 (11 members were absent). First row: Matsubara, Shows, Tocchini-Valentini, Honjo, Shimizu, McKusick, Lyon, Gilbert, Cantor, Robson, Karpov (observer). Second row: Hirt, Ruddle, Collins, Zinder, Sutherland, Cavenee, Hinton (staff), Tooze, Hood, Frézal, Cahill, Ferguson-Smith. Third row: Pearson, Dulbecco, Philipson, Jacob, Mirzabekov, Goodfellow (observer), Dausset, Watson, Worton, Southern, Strayer (staff), Grzeschik.

HUGO is incorporated in Geneva, Switzerland. As stated in its Articles of Association, "membership of HUGO shall be open to all persons concerned with the human genome or other scientific subjects related to it." It was decided in Montreux to follow an academy model, i.e., to have a limited and elected membership. In elections conducted by mail during the 5 months after Montreux, 178 additional members of HUGO were chosen, bringing the total to 220. As indicated in Table 1, the members are drawn from 23 countries. The full membership list is given at the end of this article.

Chateau de Chillon,
Site of Lord Byron's romantic poem "The Prisoner of Chillon"

In the words of Norton Zinder, a member of the Founding Council, HUGO is a "U.N. for the human genome." As stated-in the Articles and Bylaws, its purposes are as follows:

• to assist with the coordination of research on the human genome and in particular to foster collaboration between scientists with a view to avoiding unnecessary competition or duplication of effort, and to coordinate this research with parallel studies in model organisms;
• to coordinate and to facilitate the exchange of data and biomaterials relevant to human genome research and through a training program, encourage the spreading of the related technologies;
• to encourage public debate and provide information and advice on the scientific, ethical, social, legal, and commercial implications of human genome projects.

The coordinating functions of HUGO have three dimensions: international, interdisciplinary, and interspecies. The coordination among nations has its counterparts in the coordination desirable among scientists working on genetic mapping and those working on physical mapping and sequencing and among scientists working on the genomes of various model organisms. Thus far, standing committees on physical mapping, databases, and the mouse genome have been set up. By mutual agreement of the executive committees of HUGO and the Human Gene Mapping Workshops (HGMW), HGMW is to become a component of HUGO.

For the conduct of the business of HUGO, three regional offices are being established. The North American office is located in Bethesda, Maryland; the European office in London, UK; and the Pacific office in Osaka, Japan.

To this point, financing of HUGO has come from several nongovernmental foundations, including the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Lucille P. Markey Charitable Trust, and the Wesley Foundation. Multinational governmental funding for HUGO is now being sought.

Genomics 5, 385-387 (1989), reproduced by permission of the author

HUGO Membership (of early 1989)
Those in bold and marked with a * are members of the founding council