Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

IBD Genetics Research Center

Judy Cho, MD

Professor, Pathology, Molecular and Cell Based Medicine

Vice Chair of the Department of Pathology, Molecular and Cell-Based Medicine

Dean of Translational Genetics

My major research efforts currently are: a) defining mechanisms of stromal/epithelial/myeloid cell cross talk in IBD; b) predicting differences in clinical outcomes of interest across IBD clinical subtypes and populations; c) exploring the role of rare, IBD-associated variants of high effects; and d) developing new treatment targets based on IBD genetic and single cell expression findings. The explosion of data and new data tools that are accelerating collaborative efforts to benefit patients through genetic and genomic studies; applying new data and technology approaches will broadly benefit the NIDDK IBDGC.

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Co-Investigators

Dr. Bruce Sands, MD, MS

Professor of Medicine
Lead Clinician

Bruce Sands, MD, MS is the Dr. Burrill B. Crohn Professor of Medicine. Dr. Sands is an expert in the management of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) and has earned an international reputation for his care of patients with complex and refractory disease. He joined Mount Sinai in 2010 as Chief of the Dr. Henry D. Janowitz Division of Gastroenterology. Prior to joining Mount Sinai, Dr. Sands was Medical Co-Director of the Crohn’s & Colitis Center at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where he also served as the hospital’s Acting Chief of the Gastrointestinal Unit as well as Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Ling-shiang Chuang, PhD

Assistant Professor, Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine
Technology Innovation, Zebrafish Modeling

Dr. Chuang has served as Instructor of Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences since 2018 and Principal Investigator of the Charles Bronfman Institute of Personalized Medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai since 2021. In collaboration with his post-doctoral advisor, Dr. Judy Cho, Dr. Chuang has been at the center of building new IBD therapeutic agents with both human genetics and the novel zebrafish intestine injury model.

Miriam Merad, MD, PhD

Professor of Oncological Science, Medicine and Immunology
Technology & Immunology

Miriam Merad, M.D.; Ph.D. is the Mount Sinai Endowed professor in Cancer Immunology and the Director of the Precision Immunology Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Dr. Merad also co-leads, the Cancer Immunology program at The Mount Sinai Tisch Cancer Institute and is the Director of the Mount Sinai Human Immune Monitoring Center (HIMC).

Lead Clinicians

Ryan Ungaro, MD, MS
Ayanna Lewis, MD, MS
Adam Steinlauf, MD
Asher Kornbluth, MD
Peter Legnani, MD
James Marion, MD
Alex Greenstein, MD (Surgeon)
Sergey Khaitov, MD (Surgeon)
Jean-Fred Colombel, MD
Bachir Taouli, MD (Radiology)
Noam Harpaz, MD, PhD (Pathology)
Alexandros Polydorides, PhD

Lab and Project Management

Ksenija Sabic (Research Manager)
Nai-Yun Hsu PhD (Senior staff scientist)

Clinical Coordinators

Lorena Tavares
Brian Salazar, MPH
Alexis Angulo, MPH

NIDDK IBDGC-related goals

Specific Aims

Aim 1: To define cellular and genetic mechanisms of perianal fistulous rectal Crohn’s disease via direct ex-vivo, single cell multi-omics in African-American and European ancestry patients.

Aim 2: To model differentiation branch points of pluripotent intestinal epithelial stem cells and blood monocytes via multiomic, serial single cell analyses.

Aim 3: Across the NIDDK IBDGC, to enhance power for genetic discovery and improved prediction in African-American and Hispanic cohorts and in hospitalized ulcerative colitis flares.

Ancillary Liaisons

University of North Carolina: Shehzad Sheikh and Terrance Furay

Additional resources at Mount Sinai

BioMe cohort: Dr. Cho accesses the School’s blood-based biobank containing over 60K patients, for whom 30K have attained whole exome sequence data
MSCCR (Mount Sinai Crohn’s and Colitis Registry): under the leadership of Dr. Sands, the MSCCR cohort contains over 1500 IBD patients for whom RNASeq are attained, with whole exome sequencing and chip data available
Radiology de-identification: The Imaging Institute at Mount Sinai has the capacity to de-identify all personal health identifiers from DICOM-attained radiology images.
Pathology biobank: Mount Sinai is digitizing many of the clinical samples which provide a valuable new datatype for NIDDK IBDGC patients

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