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Integrating genetics and
functional genomics to identify
causative genes and variants
controlling inherited predispo-
sition to infammatory bowel
disease
> Michel Georges
Infammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), comprising Crohn’s
disease and ulcerative colitis, are part of a group of
infammatory conditions whose incidence increased quite
dramatically over the last century. This is due to as of yet
unidentifed environmental factors, to which, however, all
of us are not equally susceptible: our susceptibility to IBD
is highly heritable. During the last fve years, one of the ma-
jor advances in genetics, “GWAS”, identifed 160 genomic
regions that underlie IBD susceptibility. However, the gene-
tic variants within these regions that cause the predisposi-
tion, and – most importantly – the genes whose function
they perturb remain unidentifed. This project aims at iden-
tifying the causative genes within GWAS loci that underlie
susceptibility to IBD. This is essential as these genes and the
pathways in which they integrate are the drug targets of
the future.
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