Large-scale genomics is back — and this time, it’s global by design.
In this episode of Mendelspod, we return to the kind of ambitious, shared genomics project that helped define the field a decade ago. The Global Parkinson’s Genetics Program (GP2) has now genotyped more than 100,000 participants worldwide, with roughly one third of samples coming from historically underrepresented populations. That scale and diversity are already reshaping how Parkinson’s disease is studied — and how it may eventually be treated.
My guests are Andrew Singleton, co-lead of GP2, and Ignacio (Nacho) Mata, a geneticist at Cleveland Clinic and founder of the Latin American Research Consortium on the Genetics of Parkinson’s Disease (LARGE-PD). Together, they describe how globally representative datasets are not a political aspiration, but a scientific necessity — especially in an era of precision medicine.
Singleton explains that studying Parkinson’s across populations doesn’t just broaden participation; it increases scientific power.
“The more we learn about individual populations, the more we understand about disease as a whole — and the more chances we have to come up with treatments for disease as a whole,” he says.
Mata brings a complementary perspective from years of building Parkinson’s genetics infrastructure in Latin America. He emphasizes that without inclusion in genetic and biomarker research, entire populations risk being excluded from the next generation of molecularly targeted therapies.
“If we don’t have our patients studied for genetics or biomarkers, then those patients will not have access to the new treatments,” he notes, adding that GP2 is designed to narrow rather than widen existing health disparities.
We explores how GP2’s open-science structure has been key to its success and could serve as a model for other global research projects. GP2 has invested heavily in training and infrastructure so that researchers around the world can lead analyses locally, rather than simply contributing samples.
As both guests make clear, this is only the beginning. With hundreds of thousands of samples committed and a new generation of globally distributed investigators, GP2 is laying the groundwork for biologically defined subtypes of Parkinson’s and for more precise diagnostics and disease-modifying therapies.
When genomics gets big enough — and inclusive enough — scale itself becomes a discovery.
