PRS Center for Admixed Populations (CAPE)

Population admixture has brought together genomes from continental populations that have diverged primarily because of genetic drift, but also because of different selective pressures.  Although disentangling interplay of genetic and social determinants of health in admixed populations is critical for equitable medicine, admixed individuals represent only ~4% of participants in current genomic research databases. The PRS Center for Admixed Populations (CAPE) aims to develop and deploy methods for admixture-PRS that provide equitable utility for every admixed individual irrespective of their genetic ancestry, by leveraging one of the largest dataset of admixed individuals of >230,000 individuals across EHR- and cohort-based studies to build, test and calibrate admixture-PRS. This project is led by Bogdan Pasaniuc (UPenn, contact PI), Eimear Kenny (Mt. Sinai, MPI), and Leslie Lange (U of Colorado, MPI). CAPE is part of the NIH-funded PRIMED Consortium to develop and evaluate methods to imrpove the use of polygenic risk scores (PRS/PGS) to predict disease and health outcomes towards accurate translation.

NIH RePORTER: U01HG011715

Contact PI

  • Bogdan Pasaniuc (UPenn)

MPI

Program Officer

  • Mollie Minear (NIH,  National Institutes of Health)