Genome Plasticity in Health and Disease

Professor Forero is medical doctor, graduated from the National University of Colombia and did his PhD in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Antwerp (Belgium). Dr. Forero is Full Professor at the School of Medicine of the Universidad Antonio Nariño (Bogotá, Colombia), being the current leader of the Biomedical Sciences Research Group, Director of the Neuropsychiatric Genetics Laboratory and Director of the PhD Program in Health Sciences. He has led several research projects in molecular genetics of neurological and psychiatric disorders, in collaboration with national and international research groups. Dr Forero has authored publications in international scientific journals and books (cumulative impact factor of 223.267, h index: 22). He has been Associate Editor of BMC Research Notes, member of the editorial board of 3 international scientific journals and peer reviewer for 69 international scientific journals. George P. Patrinos is Professor of Pharmacogenomics and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology in the University of Patras (Greece), Department of Pharmacy, Head of Division of Pharmacology and Biosciences of the same Department and holds adjunct Full Professorships at Erasmus MC, Faculty of Medicine, Rotterdam (the Netherlands) and the United Arab Emirates University, College of Medicine, Department of Genetics and Genomics, Al-Ain (UAE). Also, since March 2018, he is Chair of the Global Genomic Medicine Collaborative (G2MC) and since May 2023 Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the ASPIRE Abu Dhabi Precision Medicine Research Institute. He has ample regulatory experience, as he served for 12.5 years as Full Member and Greece’s National representative in the CHMP Pharmacogenomics Working Party of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and he is still an active member of the European Medicines Agency participating in expert panels to provide scientific advice where needed. George is currently Director of the Laboratory of Pharmacogenomics and Individualized Therapy, the first officially established academic pharmacogenomics laboratory in Greece. His group has keen interest in research covering disciplines from wet and dry lab and public health genomics projects, all focusing on pharmacogenomics and personalized medicine. In particular, his research interests involve discovery work and clinical implementation of pharmacogenomics, focusing in particular in psychiatry but also cardiology and oncology, genomics of rare disorders and transcriptional regulation of human fetal globin genes. Moreover, George’s group is internationally recognized for its involvement in developing National/Ethnic Genetic databases to document the genetic heterogeneity in different populations worldwide and of genome informatics tools to translate genomic information into a clinically meaningful format. Also, George’s group has a keen interest in public health genomics to critically assess the impact of genomics to society and public health. George has more than 330 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals, some of them in leading scientific journals, such as The Lancet and Lancet EBioMedicine. Also, he has co-authored and co-edited more than 15 textbooks, among which the renowned textbook “Molecular Diagnostics”, published by Academic Press, now in its 3rd edition, while he is the editor of “Translational and Applied Genomics” book series, published by Elsevier. Furthermore, since September 2020, he serves as Editor-In-Chief of the prestigious Pharmacogenomics Journal (TPJ), published by Nature Publishing Group, Associate Editor and member of the editorial board of several scientific journals and has been a member of several international boards and advisory and evaluation committees. Apart from that, George is the main co-organizer of the Golden Helix Conferences, an international meeting series on Pharmacogenomics and Genomic Medicine with more than 50 conferences organized in more than 25 countries worldwide.

1. Impact of Genome Plasticity on Health and Disease

Section I. Plasticity of the Human Genome2. Overview of the Human Genome3. Methods for Epigenomic Analyses: DNA Methylation4. Genomic Databases5. Genomic Variability: Germline, Somatic and de novo Variants6. Founder Variations in Isolated Populations7. DNA Methylation8. Chromatin, Histones and Histone Modifications in Health and Diseases9. Networks of Transcription Factors10. Centromere and Telomere Dynamics in Humans

Section II. Human Genome Plasticity and Diseases11. Genome Plasticity and Cardiovascular Diseases12. Genome Plasticity and Neuropsychiatric Disorders13. Genome Plasticity and Endocrine Diseases14. Implications of Genome Plasticity for Drug Development