CANSSI Ontario STAGE Welcomes PhD Trainee Fesobi Oluwamuyiwa

Fesobi Oluwamuyiwa Selected as a Trainee Under the CANSSI Ontario STAGE Program.

CANSSI Ontario STAGE is pleased to announce that Fesobi Oluwamuyiwa has been selected as a CANSSI Ontario STAGE Trainee with his project “Investigating the Role of Human Leukocyte Antigen Alleles in Cystic Fibrosis through Long-Read Sequencing.” 

Fesobi is a PhD student in the the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, currently working under the supervision of Drs. Lisa Strug, Esteban J. Parra, and Geoffrey Liu.

Fesobi’s research experience is in bioinformatics, statistical genetics, immunogenetics and long-read genetic data analysis. He has publications in the areas of antimalarial drug resistance, plant omics, malaria and otitis media. Before embarking on his doctoral journey, he earned a Master of Science from Covenant University in Ota, Nigeria. He is also a recipient of the International PhD Scholarship, University of Toronto Mississauga.

Fesobi’s CANSSI Ontario STAGE project aims to characterize the genetic variations of the highly polymorphic HLA genes in Canadians with Cystic Fibrosis (CF) by identifying the HLA alleles that modulate CF severity. This study has significant clinical implications, as it seeks to identify genetic modifiers that could improve the prediction of disease progression and facilitate personalized treatment strategies for CF patients, potentially guiding interventions targeting specific immune pathways.