Division of Genomic Outcomes

Jerome I. Rotter, M.D. is a medical geneticist/geneticist epidemiologist. He is Director of the Institute for Translational Genomics and Population Sciences at the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation (formerly the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute) at Harbor-UCLA, Director of the Division of Genomic Outcomes in the Department of Pediatrics and Medicine, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (the southern campus of the UCLA School of Medicine), and a Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Human Genetics at UCLA. He is a Los Angeles native, and a product of UCLA (undergraduate, medical school, and UCLA affiliated hospitals for postgraduate work). He was a Harbor-UCLA intern, a Wadsworth VA resident, and a Harbor-UCLA Medical Genetics fellow. He has been a UCLA faculty member since 1978, first at Harbor-UCLA (1978-1986), then at UCLA-affiliated Cedars-Sinai (1986-2013), and now again at Harbor-UCLA (2013-present).

Dr. Rotter’s research is in the genetics of common, complex diseases, i.e. the earliest determinants of what are for the most part adult diseases but with the origins of their pathophysiology in childhood. He has contributed to our knowledge of the genetic basis of cardiometabolic disorders (atherosclerosis, coronary artery disease, valvular heart disease, arrhythmias and EKG variation, blood pressure and hypertension, lipid disorders, nonalcoholic fatty liver diseases, obesity, diabetes, diabetic kidney disease, and insulin resistance), autoimmune/inflammatory/gastrointestinal disorders (type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, systemic lupus, coeliac disease, peptic ulcer), eye diseases (diabetic retinopathy, keratoconus, glaucoma, macular degeneration, myopia, retinopathy of prematurity), and pharmacogenetics (genetic determinants of response to a therapy). His work (which is intensively collaborative) has utilized a variety of paradigms, from family based, to case-control, to cohort, to pharmacogenetic studies, and from subclinical phenotypes, to candidate gene, to family based linkage, to genome-wide association, to large scale genome-wide genotyping and sequencing, to whole exome and whole genome sequencing, and to multi-omics. These studies involve hundreds to hundreds of thousands of subjects and from a handful to hundreds of investigators, the epitome of what is termed team science. Dr. Rotter and colleagues have been especially active in multiethnic studies including those in Caucasian, Hispanic, African-Americans, Chinese, Armenian, and Jewish populations. In the process, they helped delineate the genetic architecture of diabetes and insulin resistance, of blood pressure and hypertension, of lipid disorders and coronary artery disease, of cardiac rhythm disorders and sudden cardiac death, of obesity and fatty liver, and of diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma, in multiple ethnic groups. The ultimate goal of this work is to identify the optimal therapy and prevention for cardiometabolic and ocular disorders as a function of an individual’s genetic predispositions, often through what is termed polygenic risk scores. Thus, this is the basis for precision/personalized medicine, especially in minority populations.

Dr. Rotter has published some 826 peer reviewed articles (427 since 2013) and over 150 other publications (reviews, chapters, editorials, letters), and 5 books, the most notable being the two editions of King, Rotter, Motulsky’s Genetic Basis of Common Disease. 98 of his articles have appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Nature, Science, Lancet, Cell, and Nature Genetics (52 since 2013). Dr. Rotter has been the recipient of an NIAMDD Clinical Investigator Award, the Ross Joseph St. Gene Award for Investigator of the Western Society for Pediatric Research; was elected to fellowship in the American College of Physicians, American College of Medical Genetics, the American Gastroenterological Association, and the American Heart Association; and to membership in the Society for Pediatric Research, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the American Association of Physicians, and the American Pediatric Society. He is also a recipient of the Legends of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center Award, the Cedars-Sinai Pioneer in Medicine Award, and the CHARGE Senior Leadership Award. Dr. Rotter serves on the Steering Committees of TOPMed (NHLBI’s Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine; PI of MESA WGS TOPMed and the TOPMed Multi-Omics projects, also a convener of the diabetes and lipid working groups, respectively); CHARGE (Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology; chair, Genotyping Committee; convener of the exome chip, metabolomics, and polygenic risk assessment working groups respectively); and MESA (Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis; chair, Genetics Committee; PI of MESA Family, MESA SHARE GWAS, and MESA TOPMed studies). Dr. Rotter serves on the External Advisory Boards of the Precision Medicine Programs of two health systems, in Nevada (Nevada Institute for Personalized Medicine), and in South Dakota (Sanford Imagenetics).