The HD View with Dr. Alicia Semaka

Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - 3:30 pm PST/6:30 pm EST

Our incredible special guest tonight is Dr. Alicia Semaka, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia. She received her MSc in Genetic Counseling in 2005 and her PhD in Medical Genetics under the supervision of Dr. Michael Hayden at the Centre for Molecular Medicine & Therapeutics in 2012. Her doctoral research focused on intermediate alleles for Huntington disease. Using a unique, multidisciplinary methodology that combined molecular and qualitative techniques, she generated new data on the frequency, haplotype, and CAG repeat instability of intermediate alleles and explored patient understanding and genetic counseling practices regarding intermediate allele predictive test results. Her research findings fill a significant gap in our knowledge on intermediate alleles and have important implications for predictive testing. 

We will be discussing an overview of her research relating to implications for genetic counseling/predictive testing and the HD community and background information on intermediate alleles, CAG size range, repeat instability and factors that influence instability. Also topic for discussion, two family history case studies.