Faculty Spotlight: Michael Chong

Dr. Chong completed his MSc in Medical Sciences and PhD in biochemistry at McMaster University, where he studied stroke genetics and biomarkers under renowned cardiovascular geneticist, Dr. Guillaume Paré. His research mission is to apply and innovate bioinformatic techniques to support research studies, lab operations, and clinical translation. His main disease areas of interest are stroke, delirium, and brain health. So far, he has published over 60 original contributions in peer-reviewed journals (including first and last-author contributions to Circulation, Stroke, and Nature Genetics), collectively cited over 3500 times.

Q. What is your specialty and why did you choose it?

A. “My areas of specialty are bioinformatics, molecular epidemiology, and biomarkers. Their potential to contribute to precision prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases is what drew me to these fields. It is exciting to witness the realization of some of the promises of precision medicine, for example, genomic risk predictors for cardiovascular disease are now being considered alongside traditional risk factors in prevention guidelines. Underpinning such milestones are advances in bioinformatics methods, and precision medicine is not so much limited by the ability to produce data anymore, but rather to process, analyze, connect, and interpret biological information.”

Q. What has been your favourite project?

A. “Mitochondria have long been implicated in the pathogenesis of numerous diseases, but there are few mitochondrial biomarkers that can be measured and studied at scale. As such, I devised a bioinformatics tool called “AutoMitoC” that co-opts SNP genotyping arrays to essentially count the number of mitochondria within our cells (https://github.com/GMELab/automitoc). AutoMitoC has enabled the estimation of mitochondrial copy in large, ethnically diverse biobanks of hundreds of thousands of people, was featured by Nature Review Genetics, and has facilitated key discoveries in mitochondrial research. For example, low mitochondrial reserve is both a marker and causal mediator of worse stroke prognosis (Neurology, 2022) and dementia (eLife, 2022). This has been my favourite project thus far because it showcases the power of how thinking outside the box can help unearth new insights from old datasets that were previously hidden.”