WILLIAM S. BUSH, PHD, MS

Associate Director for Bioinformatics Research

William S. Bush, PhD, MS, is Associate Professor in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences and the Cleveland Institute for Computational Biology at Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Bush received his PhD at Vanderbilt University in Human Genetics in 2008 and then continued as a post-doctoral fellow in the Neurogenomics Training Program at Vanderbilt. Dr. Bush was recently named a Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation Scholar. As a human geneticist and bioinformatician, Dr. Bush’s research interests include understanding the functional impact of genetic variation, developing statistical and bioinformatics approaches for integrating functional genomics knowledge into genetic analysis, and the use of electronic medical records for translational research.

Affiliations

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Featured Publications

Antiepileptic activity of preferential inhibitors of persistent sodium current.

Anderson LL, Thompson CH, Hawkins NA, Nath RD, Petersohn AA, Rajamani S, Bush WS, Frankel WN, Vanoye CG, Kearney JA, George AL,. Evidence from basic neurophysiology and molecular genetics has implicated persistent sodium current conducted by voltage-gated sodium (NaV ) channels as a contributor to the pathogenesis of epilepsy. Many antiepileptic drugs target NaV channels […]

eMERGEing progress in genomics-the first seven years.

Crawford DC, Crosslin DR, Tromp G, Kullo IJ, Kuivaniemi H, Hayes MG, Denny JC, Bush WS, Haines JL, Roden DM, McCarty CA, Jarvik GP, Ritchie MD,. The electronic MEdical Records & GEnomics (eMERGE) network was established in 2007 by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in part […]

Automated quantification of pancreatic β-cell mass.

Golson ML, Bush WS, Brissova M,. β-Cell mass is a parameter commonly measured in studies of islet biology and diabetes. However, the rigorous quantification of pancreatic β-cell mass using conventional histological methods is a time-consuming process. Rapidly evolving virtual slide technology with high-resolution slide scanners and newly developed image analysis tools has the potential to […]

Recent Publications

  1. Bledsoe, X, Wang, TC, Wu, Y, Archer, D, Chen, HH, Naj, AC, Bush, WS, Hohman, TJ, Dumitrescu, L, Below, JE et al.. Neuroimaging PheWAS and molecular phenotyping implicate PSMC3 in Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimers Dement 2026; 22 (2): e71217. PubMed PMID:41732108 PubMed Central PMC12930104.
  2. Contreras, AG, Walters, S, Eissman, JM, Archer, DB, Regelson, AN, Durant, A, Clifton, M, Mukherjee, S, Lee, ML, Choi, SE et al.. Genetic modifiers of APOE-ε4-associated cognitive decline. Nat Commun 2026; : . PubMed PMID:41720779 .
  3. Dorfsman, DA, Cai, D, Hamilton-Nelson, KL, Adams, LD, Mena, PR, Rodriguez, VC, Sanchez, JJ, Valladares, GS, Lopez, M, Whitehead, PL et al.. Educational attainment is associated with reduced functional decline in Puerto Ricans with elevated pTau181. J Alzheimers Dis 2026; : 13872877261415933. PubMed PMID:41660940 .
  4. Durodoye, RO, Ciesielski, TH, Benchek, P, Bartlett, J, Zhu, X, Liu, S, Naj, A, Kunkle, B, Schellenberg, GD, Mayeux, R et al.. Deviations from additivity in APOE4-mediated late-onset Alzheimer's disease risk across races and ethnicities. Hum Genet 2026; 145 (1): 16. PubMed PMID:41569459 PubMed Central PMC12827419.
  5. Durant, A, Mukherjee, S, Lee, ML, Choi, SE, Scollard, P, Klinedinst, BS, Trittschuh, EH, Mez, J, Farrer, LA, Gifford, KA et al.. Evaluating the association of apolipoprotein E genotype and cognitive resilience in SuperAgers. Alzheimers Dement 2026; 22 (1): e71024. PubMed PMID:41542929 PubMed Central PMC12809718.
  6. Khurshid, Z, Farrell, JJ, Tong, T, Zhu, C, Alzheimer's Disease Sequencing Project, Martin, ER, Bush, W, Pericak-Vance, MA, Wang, LS, Schellenberg, G et al.. Multi-ancestry exome-wide study identifies variants associated with Alzheimer's disease protection. J Alzheimers Dis 2026; 109 (3): 1274-1286. PubMed PMID:41428483 .
  7. Ray, NR, Kurup, J, Kumar, A, Rajabli, F, Wang, L, Xu, W, Jin, F, Yilmaz, E, Kizil, C, Bertholim-Nasciben, L et al.. Local genetic correlation analysis of Alzheimer's disease and stroke implicates PHLPP1 as a shared locus in individuals of African ancestry. medRxiv 2025; : . PubMed PMID:41404293 PubMed Central PMC12704622.
  8. Sun, X, Mews, M, Wheeler, NR, Benchek, P, Gu, T, Gomez, L, Ray, N, Reitz, C, Naj, AC, Below, JE et al.. Multi-ancestry Transcriptome-Wide Association Study Reveals Shared and Population-Specific Genetic Effects in Alzheimer's Disease. bioRxiv 2025; : . PubMed PMID:41279621 PubMed Central PMC12637479.
  9. Mustafa, Y, Main, LR, Mews, M, Janve, VA, Hohman, TJ, Haines, JL, Song, YE, Griswold, AJ, Pericak-Vance, MA, Scott, WK et al.. Monocyte inflammation and resilience to Alzheimer's disease: novel genetic risk genes identified by transcriptome-wide association study. Transl Psychiatry 2025; 15 (1): 481. PubMed PMID:41253753 PubMed Central PMC12627486.
  10. Gorski, M, Grunin, M, Herold, JM, Fröhlich, B, Behr, M, Wheeler, N, Bush, WS, Song, YE, Zhu, X, Blanton, SH et al.. Diverse-Ancestry GWAS of Age-Related Macular Degeneration on 16,108 Examined Cases and 18,038 Controls. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci 2025; 66 (13): 51. PubMed PMID:41159651 PubMed Central PMC12577769.
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