Heart failure places a substantial burden on population health and better understanding of causal human biology is needed to enable the development of effective therapeutic approaches, which are currently lacking. Pre-clinical disease models have proved poorly predictive of human disease and the therapeutic pipeline for heart failure is limited.
Our research seeks to use large-scale genetic studies and integrative –omic approaches to advance the understanding of disease mechanisms in heart failure and related sub-phenotypes. The group pursues these aims through collaboration, serving the HERMES consortium (below) as lead coordinating centre, providing operational and analytic support.
Our group contributes to the broader IHI Genomics and Phenomics teams to develop disease phenotypes at scale using genomic-enriched electronic health records, and also collaborates closely with the ICS Translational Genomics for cross-trait analyses and Mendelian randomisation. (www.ucl.ac.uk/cardiovascular/research/population-science-and-experimental-medicine/centre-translational-genomics/translational).
To identify genetic variants influencing risk and prognosis in heart failure and related sub-phenotypes through large-scale genome-wide association analysis.
To investigate functional mechanisms linking heart failure loci to disease outcomes through fine-mapping, functional annotation and integrative analyses using association data from related disease and biomarker traits.
To use Mendelian randomisation to test existing disease hypotheses, including the causal role of established risk factors and the efficacy and safety of putative drug targets.