AUSTIN (KXAN) — The University of Texas at Austin and Tec de Monterrey have launched a research center with the goal of improving the health of millions in the Americas.  The two universities started the OriGen Health Research Center (OHRC), a research center leveraging Latin America’s large st biobank, which contains the genetic, clinical and epidemiological information of thousands of people. Researchers associated with the center will use that dataset to understand why Latino populations are more likely to develop some diseases than other groups.  “There's a disproportionate experience of mental health distress, diabetes, obesity, some types of cancer [and] some types of inflammatory disease,” said Gabriela Livas Stein, Ph.D, a co-director of the OriGen Health Research Center.  “We don't understand a lot of these diseases because most of the work that has looked at genetic markers is focused primarily on folks of White-European descent,” she continued.  The center brings experts in artificial intelligence, analysis,  genetics, obesity and statistics to better understand the biological and social drivers influencing chronic disease.  Researchers from both universities are expected to use AI technologies to assist them in tackling complex questions.  “We're wanting to take advantage of some of those methodologies that we have on campus at UT – a big strength of ours in terms is machine learning and AI,” Stein said. “AI can really give us some shortcuts to develop personalized medicine that's going to speed up discovery a lot faster. It's just a more efficient way of pointing us in the right direction,” she continued.  Researchers are expected to complete the center's first project by the summer and publish that work next year.  “It's going to be a really rich opportunity to understand the unique risk factors in this population,” she said. ...read more read less