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

ICD-9 tobacco use codes are effective identifiers of smoking status.

Wiley LK, Shah A, Xu H, Bush WS,. To evaluate the validity of, characterize the usage of, and propose potential research applications for International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) tobacco codes in clinical populations.Using data on cancer cases and cancer-free controls from Vanderbilt’s biorepository, BioVU, we evaluated the utility of ICD-9 tobacco use codes […]

Interrogating the complex role of chromosome 16p13.13 in multiple sclerosis susceptibility: independent genetic signals in the CIITA-CLEC16A-SOCS1 gene complex.

Zuvich RL, Bush WS, McCauley JL, Beecham AH, De Jager PL, , Ivinson AJ, Compston A, Hafler DA, Hauser SL, Sawcer SJ, Pericak-Vance MA, Barcellos LF, Mortlock DP, Haines JL,. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurodegenerative, autoimmune disease of the central nervous system, and numerous studies have shown that MS has a strong genetic component. […]

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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