Seminars and Events

Chris Gignoux, PhD

Associate Professor
Interdisciplinary Quantitative Biology
University of Colorado Boulder

“Understanding polygenic risk from the lens of a learning healthcare system”

The wealth of insights from genome-wide association studies has led to increased interest in
the potential clinical applications of polygenic risk scores. Here, biobanks provide a novel
opportunity to examine polygenic effects in real-world healthcare settings and to investigate
across hundreds to thousands of traits. In this paper, I will describe the development of the
Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine, a large institutional biobank with a robust and
scalable return-of-results program. I will then discuss how we have utilized this new resource
to study the potential, as well as the pitfalls, of polygenic scoring, particularly across the
spectrum of human genetic diversity.

View Flyer