Dr. Lining Guo is a Vice President in Metabolon (Durham, North Carolina), responsible for overseeing Metabolon’s scientific collaboration and contract research with over 900 academic and industry partners worldwide. Prior to Metabolon, Lining was Director of Biochemistry in Paradigm Genetics, a system biology company, and a technical leader of biochemistry in Dow AgroSciences (a Dow Chemical Company). Lining received his Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University.
Dr. Lucy Davison works as a Senior Postdoctoral Fellow at the Royal Veterinary College in London and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in Oxford. She is a veterinary surgeon with a special interest in the genetics and immunology of diabetes mellitus. After a PhD at the University of London, Lucy completed her Clinical Specialist training in canine and feline medicine. She was then awarded a Wellcome Trust Intermediate Clinical Fellowship at Cambridge Institute for Medical Research with Prof. John Todd. This was followed by a Wellcome Trust Veterinary Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in Oxford with Prof. Chris O’Callaghan. Lucy’s research aims to understand the relationship between genotype and diabetes risk in humans and other species. This presentation will focus on the 16p13.13 region in humans, which affects risk of many autoimmune conditions including type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and primary biliary sclerosis.
John Todd FRS, FMedSci, FRCP Hons, PhD is Professor of Precision Medicine at the University of Oxford (until recently Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of Cambridge), Director of the JDRF/Wellcome Trust Diabetes and Inflammation Laboratory (DIL) in the University’s Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, and a Senior Investigator of the National Institute for Health Research. His PhD was in Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. Todd researches type 1 diabetes (T1D) genetics and disease mechanisms with an aim of clinical intervention. Previously, Todd was Professor of Human Genetics and a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. Todd helped pioneer genome-wide genetic studies, first in mice and then in humans. He then went on to study the associations between mapped genomic disease-associated regions and phenotypes by founding and deploying the Cambridge BioResource. His research in genetics and diabetes has received several awards and prizes. In the latest phase of his research, to translate basic genetic and immunological knowledge to treatment and prevention, the DIL has now completed its first two mechanistic, statistically adaptive, drug dose-finding studies in T1D patients. This design and analyses have revealed several previously unknown effects of interleukin-2 (IL-2) on the human immune system, providing key information on the future possibility of using subcutaneous administration of ultra-low doses of IL-2 to preserve pancreatic islet beta-cell function to treat and prevent T1D. In Oxford the DIL is launching a programme to investigate which T1D risk regions affect beta-cell function and fragility. We are applying the latest single-cell, mass spectrometry methods, bioinformatics and statistical methods.
Todd has supervised 31 PhD students with three in progress. h-index 94, total citations over 38,000.
