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

CC-logoCWRUlogowTag240x120

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. 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.
  2. 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 .
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  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. PLoS Genet 2025; 21 (9): e1011701. PubMed PMID:40906820 PubMed Central PMC12419754.
  6. Osterman, MD, Song, YE, Lynn, A, Miskimen, K, Wheeler, NR, Bartlett, J, Farrer, LA, Schellenberg, GD, Martin, ER, Pericak-Vance, MA et al.. Examining the Performance of Polygenic Risk Scores for Alzheimer Disease Within and Across Populations Using k-Fold Cross-Validation. Neurol Genet 2024; 10 (6): e200198. PubMed PMID:40881139 PubMed Central PMC11727989.
  7. Akinyemi, R, Omotoso, O, Kamada, L, Ndetei, D, Cuccaro, M, Akpalu, A, Adams, LD, Sarfo, SF, Njamnshi, AK, Whitehead, P et al.. Recruitment and Retention for Alzheimer's Disease Diversity Genetic Cohorts in the ADSP (READD-ADSP): A global effort to identify genetic factors in Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimers Dement (N Y) 2025; 11 (3): e70148. PubMed PMID:40861501 PubMed Central PMC12375874.
  8. Akgun, B, Gulyayev, AV, Coker, M, Hamilton-Nelson, KL, Olalusi, O, Adams, LD, Akinwande, K, Whitehead, PG, Diala, S, Ogunronbi, M et al.. ABCA7 deletion lowers age at onset of Alzheimer's disease and interacts with APOE ε4 synergistically in African-ancestry populations. Alzheimers Dement 2025; 21 (8): e70583. PubMed PMID:40832784 PubMed Central PMC12365657.
  9. Cheng, PL, Wang, H, Dombroski, BA, Farrell, JJ, Horng, I, Chung, T, Tosto, G, Kunkle, BW, Bush, WS, Vardarajan, B et al.. A specialized reference panel with structural variants integration for improving genotype imputation in Alzheimer disease and related dementias. HGG Adv 2025; 6 (4): 100487. PubMed PMID:40751311 PubMed Central PMC12362095.
  10. Ciesielski, TH, Tosto, G, Durodoye, RO, Rajabli, F, Akinyemi, RO, Byrd, GS, Bush, WS, Kunkle, BW, Reitz, C, Vance, JM et al.. Country-level incidence of Alzheimer disease and related dementias is associated with increased omega-6-PUFA consumption. Commun Med (Lond) 2025; 5 (1): 326. PubMed PMID:40745374 PubMed Central PMC12314086.
Search PubMed