EP 204: Bringing cardiovascular genetics and biobank discoveries into the clinic with Samuli Ripatti of the University of Helsinki

This week on The Genetics Podcast, Patrick is joined by Samuli Ripatti, Director of the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM), Vice Director at HiLIFE, and Professor of Biometry at the University of Helsinki. They discuss Samuli’s research on lipid and cardiovascular genetics, how polygenic risk scores are moving into clinical care, and the power of the FinnGen biobank. 

Show Notes: 

0:00 Intro to The Genetics Podcast

00:59 Welcome to Samuli

01:48 Samuli’s path from statistics to genetics at the beginning of a new era

03:09 Remembering Leena Peltonen and the Human Genetics Summer School

05:46 Samuli’s research in lipid and cardiovascular genetics and the power of collaboration

09:14 Integrating polygenic risk scores into cardiovascular and breast cancer care

14:52 Using medication history in FinnGen to uncover cardiometabolic genetics and predict treatment patterns

18:50 The future of polygenic risk scores in predicting prognosis and guiding treatment

21:21 The confounding effect of treatment in genetic studies

23:14 Overview of FinnGen and its impact on genetics and drug discovery

27:04 The next 5 years in proteomics and molecular profiling to move beyond associations

29:56 Using polygenic risk scores in clinical trials

31:41 Future directions, from refining phenotypes in large biobanks to piloting clinical applications of polygenic risk scores

34:04 Scaling population biobanks versus deep phenotyping and why the future requires both

35:29 Closing remarks

Find out more

• Genetic predictors of lifelong medication-use patterns in cardiometabolic diseases (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02122-5)

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