Wayne Jepsen, Ph.D.

Dr. Jepsen has been at TGen for 10 years where he has worked in the fields of Alzheimer's disease, rare childhood disorders, and clinical genomics. While studying Alzheimer's disease in the Huentelman lab, Dr. Jepsen studied a gene known as ABCC1 and found that compounds that can increase the expression of this gene or that can increase the transport activity of the encoded protein may be viable options for the treatment or prevention of the disease. As part of the Center for Rare Childhood Disorders (C4RCD), Dr. Jepsen identified the cause of many genetic disorders including two of the first males with HNRNPH2-related disorders (once thought to be embryonically lethal in males) as well as the genetic cause of Duchenne muscular dystrophy in two half brothers when all other clinical testing had failed. In the clinical space, Dr. Jepsen is the Technical Director of TGen Clinical Laboratory (TCL) where he validates rapid whole genome sequencing tests for patients with myeloid malignancies to provide physicians with the most important clinically-relevant genomic information to best treat their patients, and TCL provides those results in just days rather than the weeks it may take to yield results from the current gold standard tests. TCL currently offers a test for acute myeloid leukemia patients called ALTseq and is in the process of validating a similar test for multiple myeloma patients called JAYseq.