Philip Awadalla

Philip Awadalla is a professor of medical and population genetics at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, and the Department of Molecular Genetics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. He is the National Scientific Director[1][2] of the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow's Health (CanPath), formerly the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow Project (CPTP),[3][4] and Executive Director of the Ontario Health Study.[5] He is also the Executive Scientific Director of the Genome Canada Genome Technology Platform, the Canadian Data Integration Centre.[6][7] Professor Awadalla was the Executive Scientific Director of the CARTaGENE biobank,[8][9][10] a regional cohort member of the CPTP,[3] from 2009 to 2015, and is currently a scientific advisor for this and other scientific and industry platforms. At the OICR, he is Director of Computational Biology.

Philip Awadalla
Born
Philip Awadalla

(1969-11-07) 7 November 1969
NationalityCanadian
Alma mater
Awards
  • Quebec Science Discovery of the Year (2011)
  • Canadian Society for Clinical Investigation Young Investigators Award (2012)
  • Academy of Science of South Africa Distinguished Scholar (2016)
Scientific career
Institutions
Thesis (2001)
Doctoral advisorDeborah Charlesworth
Other academic advisors
  • Kermit Ritland
  • Charles Langley
Websitepawadallalab.org

Career

Philip Awadalla completed his Ph.D at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland under the supervision of Deborah Charlesworth in 2001. He then completed a Killam Trust Fellowship and Wellcome Trust postdoctoral fellowships under the supervision of Sarah Otto at the University of British Columbia (2001) and Charles Langley at the University of California, Davis (US) (2001-2003).

In 2004, Awadalla was appointed as assistant professor at the Department of Genetics and Centre for Bioinformatics (led by Bruce Weir) at North Carolina State University. His work there included identifying potential genetic targets for vaccines to Plasmodium falciparum, the main malaria parasite.[11][12] This has included the first genetic maps and mapping of drug resistance genes in malaria.[13][14]

In 2007 Awadalla, he became an associate professor in the department of pediatrics at the Université de Montréal, and in 2009 he became the Executive Scientific Director of the CARTaGENE Biobank of Québec. His research focused on developing next-generation genomics platforms to support to pediatric disease research and discovery of rare mutations.[15][16] Awadalla discovered the relationship of a histone methylating factor encoded by the gene PRDM9 and child-hood acute lymphoblastic leukemia.[17][16]

Research by Awadalla (with Matthew Hurles of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute) was first to directly estimate the number of mutations passed on by individual parents to human offspring, fewer than was previously estimated.[18][19] Other discoveries include large scale RNA methylation and its genetic control in human mitochondria[20] and the impact of population size on negative selection in humans.[21][22] The Awadalla team were also the first to show the impact of air pollution on gene expression and disease among thousands of individuals in the Quebec population.[23][24]

Awadalla is part of a number of collaborative programmes, including the analysis and functional analysis groups of the 1000 Genomes Project[25] and the Pan Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Program.

References
  1. "Canada's largest health research platform teams up with University of Toronto to accelerate cancer and chronic disease research". www.newswire.ca. Retrieved 2018-07-22.
  2. "U of T selected as scientific partner of Canada's largest health research platform to accelerate cancer and chronic disease research". www.dlsph.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 2018-07-22.
  3. http://www.partnershipfortomorrow.ca/
  4. Dummer, Trevor J. B.; Awadalla, Philip; Boileau, Catherine; Craig, Camille; Fortier, Isabel; Goel, Vivek; Hicks, Jason M. T.; Jacquemont, Sébastien; Knoppers, Bartha Maria (2018-06-11). "The Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow Project: a pan-Canadian platform for research on chronic disease prevention". CMAJ. 190 (23): E710–E717. doi:10.1503/cmaj.170292. ISSN 0820-3946. PMC 5995593. PMID 29891475.
  5. https://www.ontariohealthstudy.ca/
  6. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original on 2015-09-18. Retrieved 2015-10-20.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  7. "The Canadian Data Integration Centre receives new funding to help cancer researchers translate findings to patients". OICR News. 2018-01-25. Retrieved 2018-07-22.
  8. http://www.cartagene.qc.ca/
  9. ICI.Radio-Canada.ca, Zone Aucun thème sélectionné -. "Tranquillement, mais sûrement, l'ADN humain!". Radio-Canada.ca (in French). Retrieved 2018-07-22.
  10. "Quebec bio-bank project expands | CBC News". CBC. Retrieved 2018-07-22.
  11. Mu, J.; Awadalla, P.; Duan, J.; McGee, K. M.; Keebler, J.; Seydel, K.; McVean, G. A. T.; Su, X. Z. (2006). "Genome-wide variation and identification of vaccine targets in the Plasmodium falciparum genome". Nature Genetics. 39 (1): 126–130. doi:10.1038/ng1924. PMID 17159981.
  12. Smith, Zach (22 January 2007). "NCSU evolutionary geneticist researches malaria's bite". Triangle Business Journal. Retrieved 7 May 2013.
  13. Idaghdour, Y.; Quinlan, J.; Goulet, J. -P.; Berghout, J.; Gbeha, E.; Bruat, V.; De Malliard, T.; Grenier, J. -C.; Gomez, S.; Gros, P.; Rahimy, M. C.; Sanni, A.; Awadalla, P. (2012). "Feature Article: Evidence for additive and interaction effects of host genotype and infection in malaria". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 109 (42): 16786–16793. doi:10.1073/pnas.1204945109. PMC 3479498. PMID 22949651.
  14. Mu, Jianbing; et al. (2010). "Plasmodium falciparum genome-wide scans for positive selection, recombination hot spots". Nature Genetics. 42 (3): 268–271. doi:10.1038/ng.528. PMC 2828519. PMID 20101240.
  15. Awadalla, Philip; et al. (2010). "Direct Measure of the De Novo Mutation Rate in Autism and Schizophrenia Cohorts". American Journal of Human Genetics. 87 (3): 316–324. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2010.07.019. PMC 2933353. PMID 20797689.
  16. Hussin, Julie; et al. (2012). "Rare allelic forms of PRDM9 associated with childhood leukemia". Genome Research. 23 (3): 419–430. doi:10.1101/gr.144188.112. PMC 3589531. PMID 23222848.
  17. Smith, Zach (26 December 2012). "This Week in Genome Research". Genome Web. Retrieved 7 May 2013.
  18. Conrad, D. F.; Keebler, J. E. M.; Depristo, M. A.; Lindsay, S. J.; Zhang, Y.; Casals, F.; Idaghdour, Y.; Hartl, C. L.; Torroja, C.; Garimella, K. V.; Zilversmit, M.; Cartwright, R.; Rouleau, G. A.; Daly, M.; Stone, E. A.; Hurles, M. E.; Awadalla, P.; 1000 Genomes, P. (2011). "Variation in genome-wide mutation rates within and between human families". Nature Genetics. 43 (7): 712–714. doi:10.1038/ng.862. PMC 3322360. PMID 21666693.
  19. "Family Genetic Research Reveals the Speed of Human Mutation". Science Daily. 13 June 2011. Retrieved 6 May 2013.
  20. Hodgkinson, Alan; Idaghdour, Youssef; Gbeha, Elias; Grenier, Jean-Christophe; Hip-Ki, Elodie; Bruat, Vanessa; Goulet, Jean-Philippe; Malliard, Thibault de; Awadalla, Philip (2014-04-25). "High-Resolution Genomic Analysis of Human Mitochondrial RNA Sequence Variation". Science. 344 (6182): 413–415. doi:10.1126/science.1251110. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 24763589.
  21. Casals, Ferran; Hodgkinson, Alan; Hussin, Julie; Idaghdour, Youssef; Bruat, Vanessa; Maillard, Thibault de; Grenier, Jean-Cristophe; Gbeha, Elias; Hamdan, Fadi F. (2013-09-26). "Whole-Exome Sequencing Reveals a Rapid Change in the Frequency of Rare Functional Variants in a Founding Population of Humans". PLOS Genetics. 9 (9): e1003815. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1003815. ISSN 1553-7404. PMC 3784517. PMID 24086152.
  22. Hussin, Julie G; Hodgkinson, Alan; Idaghdour, Youssef; Grenier, Jean-Christophe; Goulet, Jean-Philippe; Gbeha, Elias; Hip-Ki, Elodie; Awadalla, Philip (2015-02-16). "Recombination affects accumulation of damaging and disease-associated mutations in human populations". Nature Genetics. 47 (4): 400–404. doi:10.1038/ng.3216. ISSN 1061-4036. PMID 25685891.
  23. Favé, Marie-Julie; Lamaze, Fabien C.; Soave, David; Hodgkinson, Alan; Gauvin, Héloïse; Bruat, Vanessa; Grenier, Jean-Christophe; Gbeha, Elias; Skead, Kimberly (2018-03-06). "Gene-by-environment interactions in urban populations modulate risk phenotypes". Nature Communications. 9 (1): 827. doi:10.1038/s41467-018-03202-2. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 5840419. PMID 29511166.
  24. "Genetic study of Quebec residents finds air pollution trumps ancestry". Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2018-07-22.
  25. 1000 Genomes Project Consortium (2012). "An integrated map of genetic variation from 1,092 human genomes". Nature. 491 (7422): 56–65. doi:10.1038/nature11632. PMC 3498066. PMID 23128226.
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