Hailiang Huang received the Merkin Institute Fellow award

Hailiang Huang received the Merkin Institute Fellow award from the Broad Institute.

Jess Wang joined Huang Lab as a senior project coordinator.

Jess Wang joined Huang Lab as a senior project coordinator on October 30, 2023. Jess received her Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering from the Boston University.

“Profiling the inflammatory bowel diseases using genetics, serum biomarkers, and smoking information” published in iScience

In collaboration with Dr. Dermot McGovern’s team, Ruize Liu, Hailiang Huang and others published “Profiling the inflammatory bowel diseases using genetics, serum biomarkers, and smoking information” in iScience.

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) are globally prevalent and heavily influenced by genetics, but the majority of genetic data collected about them have come from people of European ancestry. We performed the largest IBD genetics study to date in East Asian populations. We revealed 80 new IBD-associated genetic loci just in people from East Asia, and 320 loci when analyzed together with data from European individuals. We also constructed a new, more accurate polygenic score for IBD risk.

Alice (Yanruo) Zhang joined Huang Lab as a Computational Associate I

Alice (Yanruo) Zhang joined Huang Lab as a Computational Associate on August 28, 2023. Alice received her Bachelor’s degree from the Middlebury College.

 

Rui Zhang joined Huang Lab as a postdoc research fellow.

Rui Zhang joined Huang Lab as a postdoc research fellow on July 24, 2023. Rui completed her Ph.D. training with Dr. Shuhua Xu at Fudan University, Shanghai, China.

“Genetic architecture of the inflammatory bowel diseases across East Asian and European ancestries” published in Nature Genetics

Working with collaborators from FinnGen, IIBDGC and various East Asian countries, we published “Genetic architecture of the inflammatory bowel diseases across East Asian and European ancestries” in Nature Genetics.

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) are globally prevalent and heavily influenced by genetics, but the majority of genetic data collected about them have come from people of European ancestry. We performed the largest IBD genetics study to date in East Asian populations. We revealed 80 new IBD-associated genetic loci just in people from East Asia, and 320 loci when analyzed together with data from European individuals. We also constructed a new, more accurate polygenic score for IBD risk.

Hailiang Huang received the Celebration of Science Recognition Award

Hailiang Huang received the Celebration of Science Recognition Award from the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Soyeon Kim joined Huang Lab as a postdoc research fellow.

Soyeon Kim joined Huang Lab as a postdoc research fellow on January 16, 2023. Soyeon completed her Ph.D. training with Dr. Hong-Hee Wong at Samsung Medical Center, Korea.

“Large-scale sequencing identifies multiple genes and rare variants associated with Crohn’s disease susceptibility” published in Nature Genetics.

As product of a highly collaborative effort in the International Inflammatory Bowel Disease Consortium, “Large-scale sequencing identifies multiple genes and rare variants associated with Crohn’s disease susceptibility” is now published in Nature Genetics.

We directly implicated ten genes that elevate or lower a person’s risk of Crohn’s disease, a form of inflammatory bowel disease. Six of those genes had no previous links to the disorder, and four are in regions of the genome that other studies had linked to Crohn’s disease.

Huang lab is awarded NIH R01 funding to carry out a genetics study of bipolar disorder in East and South Asia

NIMH has awarded Huang Lab a 5-year R01 grant to carry out a genetics study of bipolar disorder in East and South Asia. This is one of the four collaborative grants awarded to the Asian Bipolar Genetics Network (A-BIG-NET), including Huang lab, Kendler lab, Zandi lab, and Kuo lab. Working with leading investigators from East and South Asia, A-BIG-NET will establish a valuable genetic resource of 27,500 bipolar I cases and 16,000 controls, all with sequencing data, rich phenotypic information, and measures of key environmental stressors. A-BIG-NET will dramatically increase the worldwide diversity of genetics data on bipolar disorder, an important step to accelerate gene discovery in this disorder and advance global mental health equity.