Rachel L. Kember, PhD

Additional Information & Contact: Dept. of Psychiatry

Biography:

Dr. Rachel L. Kember received her Ph.D. in Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry from the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London, in 2012. Her work focuses on identifying the genetic architecture that underlies complex disorders. She has expertise in biomedical informatics and the integration of electronic health records with genomics data. Her recent work has focused on using large biobank datasets, including the Penn Medicine Biobank and the Million Veteran Program, to identify the complex phenotypic and genomic interactions that lead to substance use and psychiatric disorders.

Grants & Funding:

• National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism - K01 AA028292 (Kember): Characterizing the phenotypic spectrum associated with genetic liability for alcohol use disorder

Selected publications:

Kember, R.L., Merikangas, A.K., Verma, S.S., Verma, A., Judy, R., Regeneron Genetics Center, Damrauer, S.M., Ritchie, M.D., Rader, D.J., Bucan, M. (2020) Polygenic risk of psychiatric disorders exhibits cross trait associations in electronic health record data from European ancestry individuals. Biological Psychiatry. Jul 6:S0006-3223(20)31734-0.

Kranzler, H.R. *, Zhou, H. *, Kember, R.L. *, Vickers Smith, R., Justice, A.C., Damrauer, S., Tsao, P.S., Klarin, D., Rader, D., Regeneron Genetics Center, Cheng, Z., Tate, J.P., Becker, W.C., Concato, J., Xu, K., Polimanti, R., Zhao, H., VA Million Veteran Program, Gelernter, J. (2019) Genome-wide Association Study of Alcohol Consumption and Use Disorder in 274,424 Individuals from Multiple Populations. Nature Communications. Nature Communications. 10(1499) [*these authors contributed equally].

Kember, R.L., Hou, L., Ji, X., Andersen, L.H., Ghorai, A., Estrella, L.N., Almasy, L., McMahon, F.J., Brown, C.B., Bućan, M. (2018) Genetic pleiotropy between mood disorders, metabolic, and endocrine traits in a multigenerational pedigree. Translational Psychiatry. 8(1): 218

Hartwell EE, Merikangas AK, Verma SS, Ritchie MD; Regeneron Genetics Center, Kranzler HR, Kember RL. (2021)  Genetic liability for substance use associated with medical comorbidities in electronic health records of African- and European-ancestry individuals. Addiction Biology. Oct 5:e13099. doi: 10.1111/adb.13099. Online ahead of print.