For our next talk, in the BDI/CHG (gen)omics Seminar series, we will be hearing from Prof. Gilean McVean, Principal Scientist, Ellison Institute of Technology Oxford. We’re delighted to host Gil in what promises to be a great talk!
Date: Tuesday 10 December
Time: 9:30 – 10:30
Location: BDI/OxPop Seminar Room 0
Title: The trajectories of human disease
Abstract
The analysis of longitudinal data from electronic health records (EHRs) has the potential to improve clinical diagnosis and enable personalised medicine, motivating efforts to identify disease commonalities and subtypes from patient comorbidity information and other modalities. We have developed an age-dependent topic-modelling (ATM) method that provides a low-rank representation of longitudinal records of hundreds of distinct diseases in large EHR datasets and applied it to c. 300,000 individuals from UK Biobank and >200,000 individuals from the All of Us program. A surprisingly small number of disease trajectories capture known and novel combinations of disorders that occur throughout life and identify disease subtypes that occur in multiple topics, with differential genetic risk profiles. Such stratification improves understanding of patient risk and heterogeneity, leading to better identification of genetic risk, characterisation of pathological pathways and the discovery of new therapeutic targets.
Bio
Gil McVean is Principal Scientist at the Ellison Institute of Technology Oxford, working with the Pathogen Mission and other programs to drive innovation and delivery in the use of genomic data to improve health. Previously, he was Founder and President of Genomics plc, a spin-out from Oxford University, that uses vast genomic resources to provide the services and products to support drug development and improve healthcare through enhanced prevention and early detection. With a background in genomics, statistics and evolutionary biology, Gil has played a leading role in driving the science and application of population-scale genomics. He had central roles in the International HapMap and 1000 Genomes Projects, contributed to the development of UK Biobank and Genomics England and has worked with industrial, academic and clinical organizations across the world to realize the value of genomics. He was the founding director of the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute and has worked on problems from dissecting the molecular basis of pathogenesis in multiple sclerosis, to the genomic surveillance of malaria and the landscape of human recombination. Gil’s contributions to science have been recognized through election as a fellow to both the Royal Society (2016) and the Academy of Medical Sciences (2016) and through the role of President of the Genetics Society (2025-2028). He won the Francis Crick Prize in 2010 and was awarded the Weldon Memorial Prize in 2012.
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As a reminder, the (gen)omics seminar series runs every other Tuesday morning and is intended to increase interaction between individuals working in genomics across Oxford. We encourage in-person attendance where possible. There is time for discussion over, tea, coffee and pastries after the talks.
Hybrid Option:
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