There's been amazing coverage of our new paper @Nature nature.com/articles/s41586-0… but I wanted to put together a walk-through (and make this accessible as possible). It's a bit long so get a cup of tea! The full version is open access so pls do have a read if you are interested...

Anyone interested in how new drug targets are discovered should check out this paper by @ctstankey and @Dr_James_Lee where they follow a trail of genomic breadcrumbs to find a potential cause of IBD. This is how you get from a GWAS hit on a 'random' stretch of junk DNA to a new drug target: 1) Start with a GWAS hit for a stretch of non-coding mystery DNA that makes someone at-risk for 5 inflammatory diseases but no one knows why 2) Identify that the GWAS hit is an enhancer for an unknown gene in a specific type of immune cell (macrophages) 3) Figure out that it enhances a specific gene (ETS2) 290,000 bases away 4) Show that more of ETS2 results in more of the bad inflammatory cytokines and that removing ETS2 results in less. 5) Validate step 4 in lots of different ways 6) Use an approved drug that hits a target upstream of ETS2 to show that this minimizes the inflammation typical of IBD in the lab

Discovery of a major underpinning of inflammatory bowel disease in a gene desert nature.com/articles/s41586-0… @Nature @TheCrick