The Raffield Lab is a human genetics research group in the Department of Genetics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We work to identify genetic variants associated with hematology, hemostasis, and inflammation traits in diverse cohort and biobank studies and in collaboration with multiple groups and consortia. We then seek to link those variants to their molecular function through integration of functional annotation and rapidly expanding multi-omic datasets (including epigenomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic data), and to understand links between these traits and health outcomes including Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias and cardiometabolic disease. In all of our work we focus on improved inclusion of diverse populations, notably Black and Hispanic/Latinx populations underrepresented in genomics research.
For more details see the Research page.
Latest News
Raffield lab paper garners news coverage
Daeeun Kim’s recent paper in Neurology, Influence of Cardiometabolic and Alzheimer Disease Genetics on Cognitive-Related Outcomes in a Diverse Population garnered coverage in NBC news and Neurology Today on the paper finding “a significant association between PRS for pulse pressure and DCCD” (dementia as a contributing cause of death) with quotes from Laura Raffield.
Emily Drzymalla Awarded a NRSA Predoctoral Fellowship from NIA
Emily Drzymalla has been awarded a National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Predoctoral Fellowship (F31) from the National Institute of Aging (NIA), for her project titled “Metabolomic correlates of improved Alzheimer’s disease polygenic risk score for different populations”.
Raffield lab presents ongoing research at ASHG 2025 in Boston
Four lab members presented some of our ongoing research as posters at the ASHG annual meeting in Boston in mid-October. Emily Drzymalla presented Alzheimer’s Disease PRS, APOE, and Family History in in All of Us Madeline Gillman presented Assessment of protein slope QTLs in the Multi-Ethnic Study for Atherosclerosis (MESA) Micah Hysong presented Nature vs … Read more
Jayna Nicholas Awarded NRSA Predoctoral Fellowship from NHLBI
Jayna Nicholas has been awarded a National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Predoctoral Fellowship (F31) from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), for her project titled “Cross-Ancestry Comparison of Aptamer and Antibody Proteomics Measures”.