The six-month-long “Visualizing Virology” residency is an extension of the VI4 Artist-in-Residence Program established in 2019 by the Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology and Inflammation (VI4), and supported by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.

Sarah Tishkoff, PhD, and her collaborators have created one of the world’s largest databases of African diversity derived from genetic samples from more than 9,000 people representing more than 200 diverse ethnic groups.

Enterovirus D68 has caused an increasing number of infections during the past decade and is associated with acute flaccid myelitis, a polio-like condition that mostly affects children and causes sudden weakness and paralysis.

The therapy, haploidentical bone marrow transplant with thiotepa and posttransplant cyclophosphamide, is as safe and more affordable than the recently FDA-approved myeloablative gene therapy and gene editing treatments.

The study was the largest ancestry-stratified, genetic estimation of the heritability of diabetic retinopathy conducted to date and included an unprecedented number of individuals of non-Hispanic African ancestry — more than 46,000.

This new entry to the field works in the background to provide real-time risk assessments, with no manual inputs from health care providers required.

The authors hope the report will provide insight on the importance of education, screening and awareness to all health care providers.