Genes & Health: a British Bangladeshi and Pakistani cohort for your research

For our next talk, in the BDI/CHG (gen)omics Seminar series, we will be hearing from Prof David van Heel, Professor of Genetics, Centre of Genomics and Child Health, Queen Mary University of London. We’re delighted to host Prof Heel in what promises to be a great talk!

Date: Tuesday 18 June
Time: 9:30 am – 10:30 am
Talk title: Genes & Health: a British Bangladeshi and Pakistani cohort for your research
Location: Big Data Institute, Seminar Room 1

Abstract: Genes & Health is a large scale, long-term community based health research study of (British-) Bangladeshi- and Pakistani-origin volunteers with genetics, NHS health records, and volunteer recall for further medical research studies. These ethnicities are mostly missing from many clinical trials and cohorts. In 2024, Genes & Health recruited its 60,000th volunteer. Available datasets on all volunteers include: GSA chip genotyping and TOPMed-r3 imputation; high depth exome sequencing; multisource NHS health record linkage (including primary care, secondary care including pathology and radiology, and national NHS Digital datasets). In 2024, through recall studies we have or are performing single cell RNAseq, proteomics (Seer, Somalogics, OLINK) and metabolomics (Metabolon) on 1700 volunteers. Genes & Health has many high profile scientific publications docs.google.com/document/d/1aMzR64u8trBGw2LvzjM0Ko45X6s53lLezUVXcLJQEBc/edit We actively invite scientists in Oxford, and worldwide, to use the resource and through health research bring benefit to our South-Asian communities.

Bio: David is the Professor of Genetics at Queen Mary University of London, Honorary Consultant Physician at Barts Health NHS Trust. He trained in clinical research with a Medical Research Council Clinical Training Fellowship and a Wellcome Trust Clinician Scientist Fellowship. His current research interests are population genomic medicine of British Bangladeshi and British Pakistani communities, with genetics, NHS health data and recall for further studies based on genotype/phenotype. He is Chief Investigator for the Genes & Health longitudinal population study: www.genesandhealth.org. He was a member of the Medical Research Council Population and Systems Medicine Board (2016-2022) and he was deputy Chief Clinical Information Officer for Barts Health NHS Trust (2013-2024).
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All members of the University are welcome to join, please let reception at BDI know you’re here for the seminar and sign-in. We hope you can join us!

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To be added, ping genomics_bdi_whg-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk (with any message), you should get a bounce-back with three options to confirm your subscription. Follow any of those options, and with a bit of luck you should be signed up!

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:
Please note that these meetings are closed meetings and only open to members of the University of Oxford to encourage sharing of new and unpublished data. Please respect our speakers and do not share the link with anyone outside of the university.

Microsoft Teams meeting –
Meeting ID: 393 256 453 91
Passcode: W4FvTL
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