As part of the Institute’s fall seminar series, Eimear Kenny, PhD, spoke to scientists at HudsonAlpha about the importance of population genetics in an era of precision medicine. Kenny is the director of the Mount Sinai Center for Genomic Health.
Precision medicine is an aspect of the genetics world that often captures the public’s collective imagination with goals of treatment specifically tailored to an individual based on their genetic profile. However, Kenny notes that the promises of precision medicine are kept at bay, in part, by the lack of diversity in genetic research currently. Genetic tools like polygenic risk scores are found to be less effective for the broad swathe of people not of Western European ancestry.
Kenny points out that the field of genetics must realistically assess and address inherent biases in order to live up to the potential of precision medicine. For example, Kenny says geneticists must learn to systematically identify how clinically relevant genes translate across groups and populations while also understanding other factors, genetic and environmental, that could contribute to health outcomes.
This seminar was hosted by Greg Barsh, MD, PhD.
More information on HudsonAlpha Research Seminars, including the upcoming schedule, can be found at hudsonalpha.org/seminars.