What are polygenic risk scores and why are they important?

Dr. Leo Sugrue
Assistant Professor
UCSF Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging
co-director of the Laboratory for Precision Neuroimaging at UCSF

In this webinar, Dr. Leo Sugrue will explain Polygenic Risk Scores (PRS), how PRS can empower neuroimaging and importance of PRS in the identification of molecular mechanisms in neurological disease. Dr. Sugrue will also discuss how stratification of patients into biologically relevant groups based on PRS could become the engine that powers precision medicine.

Dr. Sugrue completed training in Radiology and Neuroradiology at UCSF where he joined the faculty in Neuroradiology in 2014. As neuroscientist and clinical neuroradiologist Dr. Sugrue’s goal is to advance methods for imaging, measuring, and modifying brain activity and to translate these techniques from the lab to the clinic in order to improve the diagnosis and treatment of brain disease. Together with Dr. Rahul Desikan, Dr. Sugrue founded the Laboratory for Precision Neuroimaging at UCSF, where Dr. Sugrue and his team work on a range of projects that share the common theme of combining brain imaging with genetic, physiologic, and behavioral data to better understand neurodevelopmental, neuropsychiatric, and neurodegenerative disorders in individual patients.