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Approved Research

Transferability of genetic loci and polygenic scores between European and Korean

Principal Investigator: Dr Woosung Chung
Approved Research ID: 100836
Approval date: April 4th 2023

Lay summary

South Korea is rapidly entering an aging society. In an aging society, a huge social healthcare cost burden emerges. In addition, the incidence rate of disease is increasing, and research for early detection of disease is a hot topic. As part of this research, genetic research for early detection of disease is being conducted, but mostly in Europeans. The average sample sizes of GWAS in Europeans continue to grow, those for other populations have stagnated and remain several folds smaller. To overcome the problems of genetic studies, some studies are being conducted on the genetic transferability of European to Asians. Asians are genetically diverse, so we focused on South Koreans. Therefore, this study aims to as follows, 

Therefore, this study aims to as follows,

1)            To identify the genetic transferability of Europeans to South Korea.

2)            To establish a genetic prediction model for disease risk and combine various environmental and clinical variables.

For our goal, we will compare the genetic architecture between ancestries and evaluate whether European genetic loci were shared by the South Korean. In addition, we can estimate the performance of the polygenic risk score and the causal inference. If Europeans' genetic loci apply to South Koreans, a wider range of genetic studies will be conducted on South Koreans. It seems to help establish a disease prediction model and will help develop optimal screening strategies and effective preventive measures.