Prokunina-Olsson Appointed Chief of LTG
, by DCEG Staff
Ludmila Prokunina-Olsson
In December, Ludmila Prokunina-Olsson, Ph.D., was appointed Chief of the Laboratory of Translational Genomics (LTG); she had been serving as Acting Chief since February 2018.
Dr. Prokunina-Olsson originally joined LTG in 2008 after a world-wide tenure track search. Previously, she was a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of the NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins. Since joining LTG, Dr. Prokunina-Olsson has developed an internationally recognized research portfolio focused on the follow-up of genome-wide association studies (GWAS). She has concentrated on the biological investigation of susceptibility alleles identified by GWAS in two domains—bladder cancer and clearance of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. By performing a follow-up of GWAS findings for clearance of HCV infection she discovered a novel human interferon, IFN-λ4. Based on her superb work, she was granted tenure at NIH in 2014.
Dr. Prokunina-Olsson continues to pursue genetic and functional studies of IFN-λ4 in relation to HCV and several other infections associated with cancer. In parallel, she has investigated and published on five distinct regions associated with bladder cancer risk in DCEG-led GWAS.