Challenges and Opportunities of Large-Scale Multi-Omics in Population Research

The Department of Epidemiology Seminar Series

Speaker:

Adam Butterworth, PhD
Professor of Molecular Epidemiology
Department of Public Health and Primary Care
University of Cambridge 

Open to the public

Abstract: Technological developments have enabled high-throughput measurement of thousands of molecular traits in parallel, facilitating their assay at scale in population cohorts. Like the genomics revolution previously, this explosion of new data generation in proteomics, metabolomics, transcriptomics etc is poised to dramatically enhance our understanding of the causes of disease, molecular subtypes of disease, and predictors of disease. But, these deployment of these emerging wide-angle assay technologies also comes with challenges and pitfalls. With examples from work led by the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit in Cambridge, Professor Butterworth will illustrate some of the opportunities and challenges that modern molecular epidemiology brings.

Biography: Professor Butterworth trained in genetics and genetic epidemiology before joining the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit in Cambridge and starting his own research group in 2011. Over the last decade, he has been at the forefront of genetic discovery for cardiovascular diseases and increasingly for molecular traits. In 2018, he led one of the first genetic analyses of a wide-angle proteomics platform (Sun et al, Nature, 2018), paving the way for subsequent studies across different molecular domains, including the transcriptome, proteome, metabolome and lipidome. As well as leading the Health Data Research UK Multiomics Cohorts Consortium, Professor Butterworth is the Scientific Director of the EPIC-CVD study, and a member of the Executive Committee of the International Hundred K+ Cohorts Consortium.