Dr. Terry-Lynn Young

Dr. Terry-Lynn Young of Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Faculty of Medicine is a molecular geneticist with specialized expertise in the founder population of Newfoundland. Her current projects concern the genetics of deafness and breast cancer.

Dr. Young earned her PhD in medical genetics from Memorial in 2000 under the supervision of Dr. Willie Davidson, now on faculty at Simon Fraser University. Her interest in genetics was sparked by earlier work with Drs. Roger Green and Bill Fitzgerald on some of the big colon cancer families in Newfoundland.

Bardet-Biedl Syndrome was the focus of her doctoral work, and during postgraduate training she developed further expertise in genetics and genomic approaches to gene discovery in deafness and breast cancer. She was a senior fellow at the Division of Medical Genetics, University of Washington, under the supervision of world-renowned breast cancer geneticist Dr. Mary-Claire King, discoverer of the BRCA1 gene (BReast CAncer susceptibility gene1). During her work at the University of Washington, Dr. Young identified 11 mutations in genes in Newfoundland families with breast and/or ovarian cancer. Her interest in returning to Memorial University to continue this research was supported when the Newfoundland and Labrador Research and Treatment Foundation was able to purchase a DNA sequencer for her laboratory. She is now working with Drs. Jane Green and Kara Laing to look for new mutations and new cancer genes.

Also during her time at the University of Washington, Dr. Young worked on blood samples from a family with hereditary deafness, identified along Newfoundland’s south coast by now-retired Memorial University geneticist Dr. Elizabeth Ives. Dr. Young was able to identify the responsible gene and since the original study, two more Newfoundland families with hereditary deafness were identified. Originally the blood work for the other two families was sent to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for laboratory work, but Dr. Young subsequently visited the researchers there and taken over the work on one family. She’s recently been successful in identifying the mutated gene in this family and is collaborating with the NIH researchers to identify the mutation in the second family. At Memorial, she is continuing research on hereditary deafness with Dr. Bridget Fernandez and a team of hearing professionals from around the province.

In funding her research, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research noted that most cases of hearing loss in western countries are genetic in origin, the result of mutation in a single gene. In the first study of its kind in Canada, Dr. Young is studying a network of extended families in Newfoundland to identify new deafness genes and their clinical profile. Her work will lead to more accurate diagnosis, prognosis and genetic counseling for affected individuals and their families. As a result of her work, routine molecular diagnostic testing could become the method of choice for screening for hearing in newborns.

Dr. Young has also received funding from the Canadian Breast Cancer Research Foundation for ongoing research on breast cancer and equipment funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) for a state-of-the-art gene discovery research laboratory for Newfoundland and Labrador.

For further information, please contact Dr. Terry-Lynn Young using the Email contact form or by phone at 709 777-6100