Members

Dr. Rosanna Weksberg
Professor, Pediatrics and Molecular Genetics
The Hospital for Sick Children and the
University of Toronto

Rosanna Weksberg, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Genetics at The Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto. She was Head, Division of Clinical and Metabolic Genetics, The Hospital for Sick Children for 11 years (1998-2008). She has over 100 publications in the areas of epigenetics, imprinting and growth control. She has worked on the overgrowth and cancer predisposition syndrome-Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome and related conditions since 1995. Over the last 10 years, her research has also focused on elucidating the biological basis and environmental contributors to neurodevelopmental disorders such as early onset psychosis and autism.

Dr. Weksberg's research focuses on the identification of epigenetic alterations associated with human disease, specifically in the areas of neurobehavioural and growth-related disorders, including infertility. An important complementary research focus of the lab involves the characterization of environmental exposures (assisted reproduction, therapeutic agents) on epigenotype. Dr Weksberg is currently funded by CIHR, CFI, and most recently by NIH (as a co-investigaor with J. Ellis and S. Scherer) for a program to study induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells derived from children with autism or psychosis and genomic copy number variations. This study will address not only the molecular aspects of the problem but will formally explore the attitudes of families to the development of iPS lines for research purposes.

Dr. Weksberg is a member of the Autism Research Training (ART) Program in Canada. She organized a Workshop on Genetic and Epigenetic Outcomes Following Assisted Reproductive Technology in Toronto in 2005. She is a Founding Member of the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences and has been on the Organizing Committee for their Annual Conference held in Washington, New Orleans and Toronto in 2007, 2008, and 2009 respectively. Dr. Weksberg is an Associate Editor for the American Journal of Medical Genetics and the Journal of Neurodevelopment.