Andrey Rzhetsky, the Edna K. Papazian Professor of Medicine and Human Genetics, and Kanix Wang, Rzhetsky lab member and Genetics, Genomics, and Systems Biology graduate student, have published a paper in Nature Genetics that uses big data sets to make novel connections between diseases and cures.
The researchers combed the records of thousands of insurance claims, noting those that were from people who were genetically related or in the same household, to create new disease classifications. According to Rzhetsky, "Understanding genetic similarities between diseases may mean that drugs that are effective for one disease may be effective for another one."
Read the full story on Science Life.