Supervisor:
Dr. Tobias Karakach
Program of Study:
Postdoctoral Fellow, Pharmacology
Project Title:
Identifying racial differences in the etiology and prognosis of pediatric ALL using Genome-wide
Association Studies (GWAS)
Lay Research Summary:
Leukemias, are cancers of the blood that represent the most common childhood cancers accounting for
approximately 30% of all cancers in children. Among these leukemias, Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL),
is the most common type with an increasingly clear genetic etiology. Almost 90% of all childhood
leukemias occur in low- and mid-income countries with particularly high rates among black populations
with recent studies showing that these populations have the worst five-year survival, and general racial
differences in disease outcomes [PMIDs: 29323237, 30614477]. Several ALL associated alleles have been
discovered via genome-wide association studies (GWAS), and clearly identify genetic risk factors [PMIDs:
19684603, 26580448]. Unfortunately, many GWAS studies are conducted using genomic data derived from
populations of Anglo-Saxon populations despite evidence that racial factors confound disease etiology and
outcome. A recent study has determined, for example, that ALL is 20% more common in Latino Americans
compared to while Americans [PMID: 29348612]. In this project, I will perform a comprehensive
GWAS analysis to systematically and comprehensively identify genetic variants that uniquely classify
racial differences among the two major subtypes of leukemia, namely ALL and AML (acute myeloid
leukemia), and for pre- and post-adolescent patients separately. We will utilize data acquired through the
NIH’s Therapeutically Applicable Research to Generate Effective Treatments (TARGET) program whose goal
is to apply genomics approaches to determine biomarkers that drive childhood cancers. We will layer these
genetic variants to other clinical parameters to define a comprehensive set of clinical and genetic factors
that determine treatment outcomes in different races.
Location:
Dalhousie University