Dr Julia Carrasco-Zanini-Sanchez

Profile

Julia did her BSc in Biomedical Sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She later did her MRes and PhD at the MRC Epidemiology unit, University of Cambridge, as part of the Wellcome Trust programme in Medical Science (Cardiovascular and Metabolic disease). During her PhD, her research focused on the use of broad-capture plasma proteomic technologies to develop risk prediction models for the incidence of a diverse range of diseases and for the identification of candidate causal targets. Julia joined PHURI as a postdoctoral researcher in computational genomics and multiomics in 2023, and has been a Lecturer in multiomics since 2025.

Julia’s research focuses on how integration of multiomics with electronic health records can be applied to improve targeted screening, diagnosis, prediction and prognostic strategies for a diverse range of both common and rare diseases.

Julia received the UK biobank researcher of the year award in 2023 for her work on proteomic prediction of >200 incident diseases developed through an international academia-industry collaboration with GSK.

Research

Publications

First author and corresponding publications

Carrasco-Zanini J, Wheeler E, et al. Mapping biological influences on the human plasma proteome beyond the genome. Nature Metabolism. 6: 2010–2023 October 2024.

Carrasco-Zanini J, Langenberg C. Blood proteins predict the risk of many diseases years before onset. Nature Medicine. 30:2419-2420. September 2024.

Carrasco-Zanini J, Pietzner M, Davittee J. et al. Proteomic signatures improve risk prediction for common and rare diseases. Nature Medicine. 30(9):2489-2498. September 2024.

Carrasco-Zanini J, Pietzner M, et al. Proteomic prediction of diverse incident diseases: a machine learning guided biomarker discovery study using data from a prospective cohort study. Lancet Digital Health. 6(7):e470-e479. July 2024.

Carrasco-Zanini J, Pietzner M, et al. Multi‑omic prediction of incident type 2 diabetes. Diabetologia. 67(1):102–112. January 2024.

Carrasco-Zanini J, Langenberg C. Broad-capture proteomics and machine learning for early detection of type 2 diabetes risk. Nature Medicine. 28(11):2261-2262. November 2022.

Carrasco-Zanini J, Pietzner M, et al. Proteomic signature for identification of impaired glucose tolerance. Nature Medicine. 28(11):2293-2300. November 2022.

Zanini JC, Pietzner M, Langenberg C. Integrating Genetics and the Plasma Proteome to Predict the Risk of Type 2 Diabetes. Current Diabetes Reports. 20(11):60. Oct 2020.

Co-authored publications

Yoshiji S, Lu T, Butler-Laporte G, Carrasco Zanini J, et al. Integrative proteogenomic analysis identifies COL6A3-derived endotrophin as a mediator of the effect of obesity on coronary artery disease. Nature Genetics. 57(2):345-357. February 2025.

Alwan H, Luan J, Williamson A, Carrasco-Zanini J, et al. Testing for a causal role of thyroid hormone measurements withing the normal range on human metabolism and diseases: a systematic Mendelian randomization. EBioMedicine. 107:105306. September 2024.

Carland C, Png G, [15 authors], Carrasco-Zanini J, et al. Proteomic analysis of 92 circulating proteins and their effects in cardiometabolic diseases. Clinical Proteomics. 7;20(1):31. August 2023.

Koprulu M, Carrasco-Zanini J, et al. Proteogenomic links to human metabolic diseases. Nature Metabolism. 5(3):516-528. March 2023.

Butler-Laporte, [11 authors], Carrasco-Zanini J, et al. The Dynamic changes and sex differences of 147 immune-related proteins during acute COVID-19 in 580 individuals. Clinical Proteomics. 19(1):34. September 2022. 

Pietzner M, Wheeler E, Carrasco-Zanini J, et al. Synergistic insights into human health from aptamer- and antibody-based proteomic profiling. Nature Communications. 12, 6822. November 2021.

Pietzner M, Wheeler E, Carrasco-Zanini J, et al. Mapping the proteo-genomic convergence of human diseases. Science. 12;374(6569):eabj1541. November 2021.

Pietzner M, Wheeler E, Carrasco-Zanini J, et al. Genetic architecture of host proteins involved in SARS-CoV2- infection. Nature Communications. 11(1):6397. December 2020.

Ishida IG, Rangel-Yescas GE, Carrasco-Zanini J, Islas LD. Voltage-dependent gating and gating charge measurements in the Kv1.2 potassium channel. The Journal of General Physiology. 145(4), 345-58. April 2015.