EP 249: Building the world's most detailed genetic map of inflammatory bowel disease with Carl Anderson of the Wellcome Sanger Institute

This week on The Genetics Podcast, Patrick is joined by Dr. Carl Anderson, Senior Group Leader and Head of the Human Genetics Programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, where he leads the Genomics of Inflammation and Immunity Group. They discuss IBDVerse, the single-cell atlas Carl's team built to map genetic effects on gene regulation across gut cell types, how coding and non-coding variants converge on shared biological pathways in inflammatory bowel disease, and Carl's vision for longitudinal multi-omics cohorts built around the sickest and most underrepresented hospital patients.

Show Notes

0:00 Intro to The Genetics Podcast

00:58 Welcome to Carl

02:05 The origins of IBDVerse and mapping genetic effects on gene regulation across gut cell types in IBD

05:43 How anti-TNFs and newer genetically-supported IBD drugs have reshaped treatment 

08:04 Genetic versus environmental contributions to IBD

09:53 Using single-cell data to uncover IBD disease subtypes

13:22 Drug sequencing and immunogenicity in treatment response

16:52 The backstory of building the IBDVerse atlas at scale

20:29 How coding and non-coding IBD variants converge on the same genes and pathways

23:38 The case for pathway-specific polygenic risk scores

28:17 Building a longitudinal multi-omics dataset to predict IBD progression and drug response

30:08 Why Sanger's next cohort targets sick and underrepresented patients rather than healthy volunteers

34:07 What Carl looks for when interviewing PhD students and faculty candidates 

39:20 A call to junior scientists and closing remarks

Find out more:

• IBDverse study