Finding preventable causes of heart and circulatory diseases

Large-scale integrative genomic studies of high-dimensional traits in cardiovascular diseases (renewal)

Understanding the direct causes of heart and circulatory diseases would help to prevent more people dying from them. However, it can be difficult to distinguish whether something causes a particular disease, or happens to be more common in the people who develop it. Professor Danesh is tackling this problem by conducting a series of inter-linked studies that will pin down the chain of events that cause heart and circulatory diseases. He is using a technique called whole-exome sequencing, which analyses only the part of the genome that codes for protein molecules, to study people who have heart attacks at an early age. He is particularly interested in genetic changes in mitochondria – the energy-producing powerhouses of our cells. His team will also drill down into the detail of less well understood subtypes of stroke and conditions like thromboembolism. In another part of the programme they will study populations in which marriage outside of the community is unusual, in order to identify and characterise genetic changes within that population. These genetic changes will be examined in relation to the type and frequency of heart and circulatory diseases seen in these people. They will then aim to link these changes in genes to the associated proteins, metabolites and blood cell characteristics that may cause heart and circulatory disease. The hope is that this will reveal new therapeutic targets to try and prevent heart and circulatory disease.