
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

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 […]

A small number of candidate gene SNPs reveal continental ancestry in African Americans.
Kodaman N, Aldrich MC, Smith JR, Signorello LB, Bradley K, Breyer J, Cohen SS, Long J, Cai Q, Giles J, Bush WS, Blot WJ, Matthews CE, Williams SM,. Using genetic data from an obesity candidate gene study of self-reported African Americans and European Americans, we investigated the number of Ancestry Informative Markers (AIMs) and candidate […]

A comparison of cataloged variation between International HapMap Consortium and 1000 Genomes Project data.
Buchanan CC, Torstenson ES, Bush WS, Ritchie MD,. Since publication of the human genome in 2003, geneticists have been interested in risk variant associations to resolve the etiology of traits and complex diseases. The International HapMap Consortium undertook an effort to catalog all common variation across the genome (variants with a minor allele frequency (MAF) […]

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. […]

A knowledge-driven interaction analysis reveals potential neurodegenerative mechanism of multiple sclerosis susceptibility.
Bush WS, McCauley JL, DeJager PL, Dudek SM, Hafler DA, Gibson RA, Matthews PM, Kappos L, Naegelin Y, Polman CH, Hauser SL, Oksenberg J, Haines JL, Ritchie MD, ,. Gene-gene interactions are proposed as an important component of the genetic architecture of complex diseases, and are just beginning to be evaluated in the context of […]
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.