Neil Hanchard

Hanchard grew up in Jamaica.[3] In 1999, he received a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery degree from the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. He then studied at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.[1][5] He received a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Oxford in 2004, and completed a residency in pediatrics at the Mayo Clinic in 2009. Subsequently, he completed a clinical fellowship in clinical genetics at the Baylor College of Medicine.[2]

Hanchard's research focuses on genetic factors that can lead children to manifest especially severe symptoms of malnutrition,[6] genomics of disease progression in children with HIV and tuberculosis, and genetic factors that contribute to comorbidities in sickle cell disease.[2] He is a member of the Undiagnosed Diseases Network, and is interested in identifying molecular diagnoses for children with uncommon genetic disease symptoms.[2]

In collaboration with the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) consortium, he was a senior author on a publication surveying human genetic diversity in Africa.[7][8][9] The study was published in and featured on the cover of Nature, which described the work as "a milestone in genomics research."[10][11] In this work, they sequenced the complete genomes of 426 African individuals who belonged to 50 distinct ethnolinguistic groups, including individuals from populations that had never previously been sequenced.[8][12] The study revealed previously unknown historical human migration patterns, for example leading to insight into the history of the Berom people of Nigeria.[9] It identified more than 3 million genetic variants that had not been previously observed, which could contribute to making genetic tests more accurate for people with African ancestry.[9][8]

He has coauthored more than 70 peer reviewed articles. His papers have appeared in Nature, Science, and the American Journal of Human Genetics.[1]

Hanchard is married with children.[3]

• Choudhury, A., Aron, S., Botigué, L.R. et al. High-depth African genomes inform human migration and health. Nature 586, 741–748 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2859-7
• Schulze, K.V., Bhatt, A., Azamian, M.S. et al. Aberrant DNA methylation as a diagnostic biomarker of diabetic embryopathy. Genet Med 21, 2453–2461 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41436-019-0516-z
• Schulze, K.V., Swaminathan, S., Howell, S. et al. Edematous severe acute malnutrition is characterized by hypomethylation of DNA. Nat Commun 10, 5791 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13433-6
• Retshabile, G, Mlotshwa, B.C.,Williams, L et al. Whole-Exome Sequencing Reveals Uncaptured Variation and Distinct Ancestry in the Southern African Population of Botswana. Am J Hum Genet. 102 (5), 731-743 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2018.03.010
• Hanchard NA, Swaminathan S, Bucasas K et al. A genome-wide association study of congenital cardiovascular left-sided lesions shows association with a locus on chromosome 20.  Hum Mol Genet.  25 (11), 2331-2341 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddw071
• Hanchard NA, Rockett KA, Spencer C, et al. Screening for recently selected alleles by analysis of human haplotype similarity.  Am J Hum Genet. 78 (1), 153-9 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1086/499252