Is genomic data the new frontier in drug discovery?

The Drug Discovery World Podcast

This is the latest episode of the free DDW podcast, “Is genomic data the new frontier in drug discovery?”. It covers two articles written for Volume 23, Issue 1 – Winter 2021/22 of DDW. They are called “Genomics boosts understanding of Covid-19 severity and susceptibility” and “Rare variant contribution to human disease”.

The Covid-19 Host Genetics Initiative carried out one of the largest genome-wide association studies ever. In the first article, Dr Hamdi Mbarek, Lead Analyst of the Qatari dataset, explains how the initiative improved knowledge of host-genetic determinants of Covid-19 infection and severity.

In the second article, Slavé Petrovski and Andrew Harper, from the Centre for Genomics Research at AstraZeneca, outline the implications and insight offered by the recent publication of an AstraZeneca-authored paper “Rare variant contribution to human disease in 281,104 UK Biobank exomes”.