Brent Richards

At @5PrimeSciences, giving back is part of who we are.

This year, our team chose to support @MSF
—to deliver critical medical care in humanitarian crises.

We’re proud to have joined the Pledge 1% Movement, committing 1% of our profits each year to health and education charities

No More Free Lunch: Challenges to Mendelian Randomization Due to Sample Selection and Complex Methods Abstract. Mendelian randomization (MR) is increasingly used in epidemiological studies to investigate causal relationships. MR depends on 3 fundamental ins

Our paper out in JCEM showing bias that can creep into Mendelian randomization studies via:

1. Collider bias due to participant selection
2. Indirect genetic effects
3. Collider bias due to GxE effects in nonlinear MR.

Led by the great Tianyuan Lu

academic.oup.com/jcem/article...

Join us today at 4:40 pm at the Festival of Genomics & Biodata (@fogenomics.bsky.social) in Boston to explore how proteomics and genomics drive drug-target discovery!

Atul Butte died yesterday.
The world lost a giant.
A big bear of a man.
With a huge smile.
With love for everyone.
With energy that could power a room.
I loved everything about Atul.
I loved how he was always happy.
I loved how excited he was about science and helping people.

Let’s hope Anne enables research

Come join 5Prime as we grow our team to use human genetics and other —omics to accelerate drug development.

New post for a Software Engineer:

5primesciences.com/careers/

The Big Five personality traits definitely have clear genetic determinants.

I'm surprised by the lack of spousal assortment and lack of shared environmental confounding though...Anyone care to guess why this is the case?

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

FIMM-EMBL Group Leaders in Molecular Medicine FIMM-EMBL Group Leaders in Molecular Medicine

We have 2-3 group leader positions opening @fimm-uh.bsky.social !!

We are looking for outstanding candidates in human genetics and precision medicine.

This time we have a focus on population health data science. E.g. AI for EHR/health data       

Generous starting package 💰

shorturl.at/FAk6n

Kári Stefánsson steps down as CEO of DeCode Genetics Kári Stefánsson, founder and long-time CEO of DeCode Genetics, has officially stepped down from his leadership role at the company he established nearly three decades ago. The announcement marks the e...

After a long and storied career, Kari Stefansson exits as CEO of DeCODE Genetics.

icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/20...

Genome-wide association study of long COVID - Nature Genetics A genome-wide study by the Long COVID Host Genetics Initiative identifies an association between the FOXP4 locus and long COVID, implicating altered lung function in its pathophysiology.

I didn't have much hope that we'd find genetic determinants of long-COVID, but after years of work, Vilma Aho, Tomoko Nakanisha, Hugo Zeberg and Hanna Ollila made it happen! (Among a few others :-))

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A flexible machine learning Mendelian randomization estimator applied to predict the safety and efficacy of sclerostin inhibition Mendelian randomization (MR) enables the estimation of causal effects while controlling for unmeasured confounding factors, but MR estimators often rely on strong parametric assumptions. We propose an...

My main postdoc project is now published in @AJHG! We describe a MR estimator (Quantile IV) that does not rely on parametric assumptions and allows for heterogeneous causal effects. www.cell.com/ajhg/abstrac...

Yes. People have a very difficult understanding variance explained intuitively

The gSOS Polygenic Score is Associated with Bone Density and Fracture Risk in Childhood The polygenic risk score genetic quantitative ultrasound speed of sound (gSOS) was developed using machine learning algorithms in adults of European ancestry and associates with reduced odds of fractu...

PREPRINT: Led by @j-a-mitchell.bsky.social & Babette Zemel, we show higher gSOS polygenic score associated with higher pediatric aBMD 🦴 & lower fracture risk @chopresearch.bsky.social . gSOS previously developed with ML on adults by @brent-richards.bsky.social team

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

There are few more engaging, creative and relentless clinician scientists than @stephenorahilly.bsky.social

I enjoyed his visit to @mcgilluniversity.bsky.social and learning how he unpicked GDF15 as a cause of morning sickness.

Canadian scientist Daniel Drucker among winners of Breakthrough Prize for discovery of hormone used in anti-obesity drugs Senior investigator at Mount Sinai Hospital was one of five researchers jointly awarded US$3-million in world’s largest science prize

A great scientist and clinician changes the world and brings home a well-deserved prize.

www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic...

To the world:
We are fighting back. Our movement has been silenced by the media here—but we are not backing down. This is what our streets looked like across multiple cities. Tomorrow, there will be more of us! Raise a glass to freedom.

—With love,
Your American allies.

And Kevin Liang successfully defended his PhD examining the use of human genetics to identify drug targets!

Well done Dr. Kevin

High-Dose Vitamin D in Clinically Isolated Syndrome Typical of Multiple Sclerosis This randomized clinical trial examines the efficacy of high-dose cholecalciferol (vitamin D) as monotherapy in reducing disease activity in patients with clinically isolated syndrome typical of multi...

Does vitamin D prevent MS onset?

We have predicted this for years using Mendelian randomization.

Here, high-dose vitamin D, in individuals with Clinically Isolated Syndrome in the D-Lay trial is perhaps encouraging.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

An excellent visit from @mendelrandom.bsky.social in Montreal this week.

He wants to change Mendelian randomization to "meiotic randomization"—likely a much better name.

But what would we call @mendelrandom.bsky.social ?

Opinion | Trump Takes the Dumbest Tariff Plunge He says the 25% levies on Mexico and Canada will begin Tuesday. Stocks fall.

Even the @wsj.com thinks Trump's tariffs are, "the dumbest in history".

www.wsj.com/opinion/trum...

That's right

I knew it!

Is there a German word for being simultaneously horrified by clumsy, misguided, and deeply destructive attacks on a critical system, and by the many grossly dysfunctional and inefficient aspects of the system being attacked? Because we really need one right now.

Looking to do a Postdoc in Genetic Epidemiology, Human Genetics or Bioinformatics? Or looking to be a Research Associate in our Lab? Research Associate Postdoc opportunity Research Associate Principle Duties and Responsibilities Management and execution of multiple computational genomics research studies, including but not l...

Come and join our research lab at @mcgill University as a Research Associate!

If you're excited about using genomics and other omics to understand causes of disease, send me a direct message or check out the position here:

www.mcgill.ca/genepi/oppor...

If you wanted to decrease the cost of homes, one thing you wouldn’t do is put a flat tariff on your main source of timber.

Can human genetic evidence can improve drug development success? The latest @hggadvances.bsky.social article by @brent-richards.bsky.social & co. uses IntAct, a protein interaction database, to explore this question: www.cell.com/hgg-advances... #ASHG #HumanGenetics #GeneticsDiscoveries

Vertex Announces FDA Approval of JOURNAVX™ (suzetrigine), a First-in-Class Treatment for Adults With Moderate-to-Severe Acute Pain | Vertex Pharmaceuticals Newsroom -- JOURNAVX is the first and only approved non-opioid oral pain signal inhibitor and the first new class of pain medicine approved in more than 20 years -- -- JOURNAVX is an effective and well-tolerat...

Hopefully we'll see less fentanyl in our emergency rooms and less homelessness.

@VertexPharma gets approval for the first new class of pain medicine in 20 years.

Genetic variation in NaV1.8 helped to identify this target.

news.vrtx.com/news-release...

📣Excited to share our paper in Nature Genetics!
rdcu.be/d7mo0

Do plasma proteins mediate obesity’s effect on CAD risk?

→Using two-step proteome-wide MR, domain-aware MR, epigenomics & scRNA-seq, we prioritized endotrophin, cleaved from COL6A3, as a mediator & potential therapeutic target.
A 🧵↓

A great collaboration led by @satoshiyoshiji.bsky.social , an impressive Assistant Professor at McGill University!

Taken together, this provides evidence that increased endotrophin levels is one reason that people with obesity have more heart attacks.

This provides a target to help people with obesity reduce their risks of disease.