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

Bioinformatics challenges in genome-wide association studies (GWAS).

De R, Bush WS, Moore JH,. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are a powerful tool for investigators to examine the human genome to detect genetic risk factors, reveal the genetic architecture of diseases and open up new opportunities for treatment and prevention. However, despite its successes, GWAS have not been able to identify genetic loci that […]

Associations between KCNJ6 (GIRK2) gene polymorphisms and pain-related phenotypes.

Bruehl S, Denton JS, Lonergan D, Koran ME, Chont M, Sobey C, Fernando S, Bush WS, Mishra P, Thornton-Wells TA,. G-protein coupled inwardly rectifying potassium (GIRK) channels are effectors determining degree of analgesia experienced upon opioid receptor activation by endogenous and exogenous opioids. The impact of GIRK-related genetic variation on human pain responses has received […]

Recent Publications

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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 2025; : 13872877251405497. PubMed PMID:41428483 .
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. Cukier, HN, DeRosa, BA, Coombs, LE, Tang, E, Leyva, DR, Lazzaro, AR, Gu, E, Dykxhoorn, DM, Haines, JL, Pericak-Vance, MA et al.. Generation of two isogenic induced pluripotent stem cell lines derived from a Hispanic individual with Alzheimer's Disease and mosaic for loss of the Y chromosome. Stem Cell Res 2025; 89 : 103851. PubMed PMID:41086611 PubMed Central PMC12818727.
  9. Kurniansyah, N, Tasaki, S, Rehman, H, Zhu, C, Farrell, J, Sherva, R, Hauger, R, Merritt, VC, Panizzon, M, Zhang, R et al.. A multi-ancestry polygenic risk score for Alzheimer disease is associated with cognitive decline, hippocampal atrophy and neuropathological hallmarks in diverse populations. medRxiv 2025; : . PubMed PMID:41040715 PubMed Central PMC12486013.
  10. Bledsoe, X, Wang, TC, Wu, Y, Archer, D, Chen, HH, Naj, A, Bush, WS, Hohman, TJ, Dumitrescu, L, Below, JE et al.. Neuroimaging PheWAS and molecular phenotyping implicate PSMC3 in Alzheimer's Disease. medRxiv 2025; : . PubMed PMID:41001458 PubMed Central PMC12458493.
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