The Center for Arab Genomic Studies, a division of Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Award for Medical Sciences will continue the activities of its webinar series through its fifth webinar. Titled “Genetic Counseling”, the webinar will be held on Wednesday, 29th of September 2021 at 7:00 pm.

 

The webinar will host talks from Dr. Mona Saleh, Assistant Professor at UAE University, UAE, who will discuss “A new Era of Genetic Counseling in UAE’’, and Dr.  Rawan Awwad, Genomic Specialist at Guardant Health, USA and Dr. Tamam Khalaf, Clinical Counseling Specialist at Igenomix, UAE, who will discuss “Genetic Counselling Approaches to Variants of Uncertain Significance in the Arab World’’. The webinar will be moderated by Dr. Alan Taylor, Genetic Counselor at Al Jalila Children's Specialty Hospital, UAE.

 

Speaking about the webinar, Dr. Mahmoud Taleb Al Ali, Director of CAGS said, “The adoption of NGS techniques has given rise to newer challenges in the field of genetic counselling, such as the lack of trained manpower and the difficulty in interpreting variants of uncertain significance. This webinar will cover some of these new challenges, and attempts being made to meet these.”

 

The first webinar in this series focused on the genomics of infectious diseases, and was followed by webinars on the topics of population genetics, gene therapy, and big data in genomics. The webinars have been very well received with more than 400 participants from around the world joining each of them.