Can we better predict who will benefit from treatments for heart disease?

Pharmacogenomic, genetic and trial-based studies of lipid-modifying therapies and vascular risk

Currently we can reduce the risk of people dying from heart disease by reducing blood cholesterol levels using drugs such as statins, controlling blood pressure and diabetes, and encouraging people to stop smoking. We can use several approaches to help us understand how safe and effective current and new treatments to prevent heart disease are, and how they work. These include pharmacogenomics (studying a person's genetic makeup, or genome, to choose the drugs and drug doses that are likely to work best), genetic studies and clinical trials. Biostatistician Dr Jemma Hopewell works in BHF Professor Rory Collins’ Clinical Trial Service Unit (CTSU) group at the University of Oxford. She has now been awarded an Intermediate Basic Science Research Fellowship to enable her to work towards her ambition of becoming a world leading researcher in her field. In her fellowship, Jemma will work on three areas that could ultimately influence clinical guidelines and public health strategy, First, she will investigate whether an individual’s risk factors (including genes or age) influences how beneficial a statin or other newer treatments will be, or the side effects they will experience. She will also use genetics to improve our understanding of the biology of heart attacks and strokes, and better understand how treatments currently under development may work. This research could help doctors provide more personalised treatment by identifying ways to spot patients who will benefit from treatments.