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. Rajabli, F, Benchek, P, Tosto, G, Kushch, N, Sha, J, Bazemore, K, Zhu, C, Lee, WP, Haut, J, Hamilton-Nelson, KL et al.. Multi-ancestry genome-wide meta-analysis of 56,241 individuals identifies known and novel cross-population and ancestry-specific associations as novel risk loci for Alzheimer's disease. Genome Biol 2025; 26 (1): 210. PubMed PMID:40676597 .
  2. Kuzma, A, Valladares, O, Greenfest-Allen, E, Nicaretta, H, Kirsch, M, Ren, Y, Katanic, Z, White, H, Wilk, A, Bass, L et al.. NIAGADS: A data repository for Alzheimer's disease and related dementia genomics. Alzheimers Dement 2025; 21 (6): e70255. PubMed PMID:40545618 PubMed Central PMC12183107.
  3. Eissman, JM, Regelson, AN, Walters, S, Archer, DB, Durant, A, Mukherjee, S, Lee, ML, Choi, SE, Scollard, P, Trittschuh, EH et al.. Sex-Specific Genetic Drivers of Memory, Executive Functioning, and Language Performance in Older Adults. medRxiv 2025; : . PubMed PMID:40492063 PubMed Central PMC12148254.
  4. Leung, YY, Lee, WP, Kuzma, AB, Nicaretta, H, Valladares, O, Gangadharan, P, Qu, L, Zhao, Y, Ren, Y, Cheng, PL et al.. Alzheimer's Disease Sequencing Project release 4 whole genome sequencing dataset. Alzheimers Dement 2025; 21 (5): e70237. PubMed PMID:40407102 PubMed Central PMC12100500.
  5. Liu, S, Bush, WS, Akinyemi, RO, Byrd, GS, Caban-Holt, AM, Rajabli, F, Reitz, C, Kunkle, BW, Tosto, G, Vance, JM et al.. Alzheimer disease is (sometimes) highly heritable: Drivers of variation in heritability estimates for binary traits, a systematic review. medRxiv 2025; : . PubMed PMID:40343016 PubMed Central PMC12060970.
  6. Lorincz-Comi, N, Yang, Y, Ajayakumar, J, Mews, M, Bermudez, V, Bush, W, Zhu, X. HORNET: tools to find genes with causal evidence and their regulatory networks using eQTLs. Bioinform Adv 2025; 5 (1): vbaf068. PubMed PMID:40270926 PubMed Central PMC12014422.
  7. Griswold, AJ, Rajabli, F, Gu, T, Arvizu, J, Golightly, CG, Whitehead, PL, Hamilton-Nelson, KL, Adams, LD, Sanchez, JJ, Mena, PR et al.. Generalizability of tau and amyloid plasma biomarkers in Alzheimer's disease cohorts of diverse genetic ancestries. Alzheimers Dement 2025; 21 (3): e14367. PubMed PMID:40133765 PubMed Central PMC11936763.
  8. Mews, MA, Naj, AC, Griswold, AJ, Alzheimer's Disease Genetics Consortium, Below, JE, Bush, WS. Brain and blood transcriptome-wide association studies identify five novel genes associated with Alzheimer's disease. J Alzheimers Dis 2025; 105 (1): 228-244. PubMed PMID:40111921 .
  9. Phillips, JM, Dumitrescu, LC, Archer, DB, Regelson, AN, Mukherjee, S, Lee, ML, Choi, SE, Scollard, P, Trittschuh, EH, Kukull, WA et al.. Novel modelling approaches to elucidate the genetic architecture of resilience to Alzheimer's disease. Brain 2025; : . PubMed PMID:40111762 .
  10. 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 APOE genotype and cognitive resilience in SuperAgers. medRxiv 2025; : . PubMed PMID:39830268 PubMed Central PMC11741496.
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