
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.
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 […]

Automated extraction of clinical traits of multiple sclerosis in electronic medical records.
Davis MF, Sriram S, Bush WS, Denny JC, Haines JL,. The clinical course of multiple sclerosis (MS) is highly variable, and research data collection is costly and time consuming. We evaluated natural language processing techniques applied to electronic medical records (EMR) to identify MS patients and the key clinical traits of their disease course.We used […]

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 […]

Rapid storage and retrieval of genomic intervals from a relational database system using nested containment lists.
Wiley LK, Sivley RM, Bush WS,. Efficient storage and retrieval of genomic annotations based on range intervals is necessary, given the amount of data produced by next-generation sequencing studies. The indexing strategies of relational database systems (such as MySQL) greatly inhibit their use in genomic annotation tasks. This has led to the development of stand-alone […]

Putting pleiotropy and selection into context defines a new paradigm for interpreting genetic data.
Predazzi IM, Rokas A, Deinard A, Schnetz-Boutaud N, Williams ND, Bush WS, Tacconelli A, Friedrich K, Fazio S, Novelli G, Haines JL, Sirugo G, Williams SM,. Natural selection shapes many human genes, including some related to complex diseases. Understanding how selection affects genes, especially pleiotropic ones, may be important in evaluating disease associations and the […]
Recent Publications
- Tejeda, M, Farrell, J, Zhu, C, Wetzler, L, Lunetta, KL, Bush, WS, Martin, ER, Wang, LS, Schellenberg, GD, Pericak-Vance, MA et al.. DNA from multiple viral species is associated with Alzheimer's disease risk. Alzheimers Dement 2023; : . PubMed PMID:37578203 .
- Walters, S, Contreras, AG, Eissman, JM, Mukherjee, S, Lee, ML, Choi, SE, Scollard, P, Trittschuh, EH, Mez, JB, Bush, WS et al.. Associations of Sex, Race, and Apolipoprotein E Alleles With Multiple Domains of Cognition Among Older Adults. JAMA Neurol 2023; 80 (9): 929-939. PubMed PMID:37459083 PubMed Central PMC10352930.
- Grunin, M, Palmer, E, de Jong, S, Jin, B, Rinker, D, Moth, C, Capra, JA, Haines, JL, Bush, WS, den Hollander, AI et al.. Integrating Computational Approaches to Predict the Effect of Genetic Variants on Protein Stability in Retinal Degenerative Disease. Adv Exp Med Biol 2023; 1415 : 157-163. PubMed PMID:37440029 .
- Li, D, Farrell, JJ, Mez, J, Martin, ER, Bush, WS, Ruiz, A, Boada, M, de Rojas, I, Mayeux, R, Haines, JL et al.. Novel loci for Alzheimer's disease identified by a genome-wide association study in Ashkenazi Jews. Alzheimers Dement 2023; : . PubMed PMID:37260021 .
- Bai, H, Naj, AC, Benchek, P, Dumitrescu, L, Hohman, T, Hamilton-Nelson, K, Kallianpur, AR, Griswold, AJ, Vardarajan, B, Martin, ER et al.. A haptoglobin (HP) structural variant alters the effect of APOE alleles on Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimers Dement 2023; : . PubMed PMID:37051669 .
- McHenry, ML, Simmons, J, Hong, H, Malone, LL, Mayanja-Kizza, H, Bush, WS, Boom, WH, Hawn, TR, Williams, SM, Stein, CM et al.. Tuberculosis severity associates with variants and eQTLs related to vascular biology and infection-induced inflammation. PLoS Genet 2023; 19 (3): e1010387. PubMed PMID:36972313 PubMed Central PMC10079228.
- Bai, H, Zhang, X, Bush, WS. Pharmacogenomic and Statistical Analysis. Methods Mol Biol 2023; 2629 : 305-330. PubMed PMID:36929083 .
- Chen, F, Madduri, RK, Rodriguez, AA, Darst, BF, Chou, A, Sheng, X, Wang, A, Shen, J, Saunders, EJ, Rhie, SK et al.. Evidence of Novel Susceptibility Variants for Prostate Cancer and a Multiancestry Polygenic Risk Score Associated with Aggressive Disease in Men of African Ancestry. Eur Urol 2023; 84 (1): 13-21. PubMed PMID:36872133 PubMed Central PMC10424812.
- Okwuegbuna, OK, Kaur, H, Jennifer, I, Bush, WS, Bharti, A, Umlauf, A, Ellis, RJ, Franklin, DR, Heaton, RK, McCutchan, JA et al.. Anemia and Erythrocyte Indices Are Associated With Neurocognitive Performance Across Multiple Ability Domains in Adults With HIV. J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr 2023; 92 (5): 414-421. PubMed PMID:36580636 PubMed Central PMC10006328.
- Rajabli, F, Tosto, G, Hamilton-Nelson, KL, Kunkle, BW, Vardarajan, BN, Naj, A, Whitehead, PG, Gardner, OK, Bush, WS, Sariya, S et al.. Admixture mapping identifies novel Alzheimer's disease risk regions in African Americans. Alzheimers Dement 2023; 19 (6): 2538-2548. PubMed PMID:36539198 PubMed Central PMC10272044.