Wednesday, December 9, 2020

CCMB Seminar: "Precision medicine in asthma care? How genomic and socio-environmental determinants inform racial disparities in childhood asthma"

4:00 PM to 5:00 PM

This seminar will be web stream only

CCMB Seminar Series – sponsored by DCMB
by Dr. Tesfaye (“Tes”) Mersha

Learning objectives: 

1. Discuss the conceptual distinction and clinical utility of self-reported race/ethnicity and genetic ancestry in childhood asthma.

2. Discuss the role of genetic ancestry and socio-environmental exposures in childhood asthma.

3. Discuss ancestry-specific polygenic risk scores, precision medicine and childhood asthma disparities. 

Short bio:

Dr. Mersha is currently an Associate Professor in the Division of Asthma Research and leads the Population Genetics, Ancestry, and Bioinformatics (pGAB) Laboratory (https://research.cchmc.org/mershalab/Home.php).

Dr. Mersha’s research combines quantitative, ancestry and statistical genomics to unravel genetic and non-genetic contributions to complex diseases and racial disparities in human populations, particularly asthma and asthma-related allergic disorders. Much of his research is at the interface of genetic ancestry, statistics, bioinformatics, and functional genomics, and he is interested in cross-line disciplines to unravel the interplay between genome and envirome underlying asthma risk. His long-term research goal is to understand and dissect how biologic predisposition and environmental exposures interact to shape racial disparities in complex disorders.