Skip to main content
The William Harvey Research Institute - Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry
  1. WHRI
  2. People
  3. Academic staff
  4. Items

Professor Panos (Panagiotis) Deloukas

Panos (Panagiotis)

Director of the WHRI and Professor of Cardiovascular Genomics

Centre: Clinical Pharmacology and Precision Medicine

Email: p.deloukas@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44(0) 20 7882 2103; +44 207 882 7098 (Jo Odetola - PA to Prof Panos Deloukas)

Profile

ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9251-070X

Panos Deloukas obtained his BSc in Chemistry from the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, Greece and MSc in Microbiology from University Paris 7, France. He received his PhD from the Biozentrum University of Basel, Switzerland in 1991. He joined the Sanger Centre in 1994 where he set up a high-throughput pipeline for radiation hybrid mapping, leading an effort to map 30,000 gene markers, GeneMap98. Panos was an active member of the Human Genome Project coordinating the sequencing and analysis of chromosomes 10 and 20. After the completion of the HGP he joined the International HapMap project constructing SNP maps of the human genome. Since 2005 he is studying the molecular basis of common disease and variable response to drugs in humans through large-scale genetic studies. He joined the William Harvey Research Institute at Queen Mary University London in September 2013 working on the genomics of coronary artery disease and lipid levels. Panos is a member of many consortia including CARDIoGRAMplusC4D, Global Lipids Genetics Consortium, GIANT, the UK Biobank Cardiometabolic Consortium, and the Cardiovascular Genomics England Clinical Interpretation Partnership. He has authored over 400 publications (H-index 121) and is listed by Thomson Reuters among the 1% highly cited researchers in Molecular Biology & Genetics since 2012.

Memberships and awards

  • Executive member of the CARDIoGRAMplusC4D consortium
  • Member of the Steering Committee of the GIANT consortium
  • Member of the Steering Committee and Co-chair of the lipids working group of  the UK CardioMetabolic Consortium
  • Member of the Cardiovascular GeCIP and lead of the functional subgroup since 2015

       ========

  • Highly Cited Researchers - top 200 influential scientists  in Molecular Biology & Genetics for the period 2002-2012
  • Highly Cited Researchers 2014, 2015 and 2016 (top 1%  in Molecular Biology & Genetics)

Research

Group members

Dr Stavroula Kanoni (Statistical Geneticist); Dr Andrew Smith (BHF Research Fellow); Dr Stephane Bourgeois (Lab Manager and Analyst); Dr Ioanna Ntalla (Post-doctoral fellow, genetic analyses); Dr Eirini Marouli (Post-doctoral fellow, genetic  analyses); Mrs Kawah Li (Technical Assistant); Ms Olga Giannakopoulou (BHF PhD student).

Summary 

Our group investigates the molecular basis of complex traits in humans focusing on coronary heart disease (CHD) and related cardiometabolic traits. 

CHD and its main complication, myocardial infarction (MI), is the leading cause of death worldwide. Through large scale trans-ethnic genetic studies we have identified thus far 70 loci robustly associated with CHD /MI risk and are currently undertaking further analyses in UK Biobank including gene-gene and gene-environment interactions. In parallel, we are investigating the genetic architecture of CHD risk factors such as lipid levels, blood pressure, haematological traits, and height through QTL analyses in large, well-phenotyped cohorts. To identify the functional variants underlying CHD risk we are integrating genetic findings with gene expression and DNA methylation QTL maps as well as open chromatin maps in relevant cell types.

Though age-standardized death rates from CHD are falling, the ageing of the population and the absence of effective therapeutic interventions/cures indicate that the burden of CHD will continue to increase. Among patients surviving a first MI event, circa 17% will experience a second event within 18 months. However, after five years the risk of an MI event is the same between MI patients and the general population. To identify biomarkers that will allow us to improve the stratification of MI patients for recurrent events we are assessing gene expression and DNA methylation in the blood. We hypothesise that such biomarkers may capture relevant environmental factors which in concert with genetic factors underscore bad prognosis. The ultimate goal is to develop a risk model for recurrent MI and test its clinical utility.

Key Publications

Full list of publications

  1. Kanoni S, Masca NG, Stirrups KE, Varga TV, Warren HR, Scott RA, Southam L, …., Gieger C, Chambers JC, Wareham NJ, Munroe PB, Franks PW, Samani NJ, Deloukas P. Analysis with the exome array identifies multiple new independent variants in lipid loci. Hum Mol Genet 2016 Jul 27 
  2. Myocardial Infarction Genetics and CARDIoGRAM Exome Consortia Investigators. Coding Variation in ANGPTL4, LPL, and SVEP1 and the Risk of Coronary Disease. N Engl J Med 374 (2016) 1134-1144 (P Deloukas joined starred senior author)
  3. CARDIoGRAMplusC4D Consortium. A comprehensive 1000 Genomes-based genome-wide association meta-analysis of coronary artery disease. Nat Genet 47 (2015) 1121-1130. (P Deloukas joined starred senior author)
  4. Dick KJ, Nelson CP, Tsaprouni L, Sandling JK, Aïssi D, Wahl S, Meduri E, Morange PE, Gagnon F, Grallert H, Waldenberger M, Peters A, Erdmann J, Hengstenberg C, Cambien F, Goodall AH, Ouwehand WH, Schunkert H, Thompson JR, Spector TD, Gieger C, Trégouët DA, Deloukas P, Samani NJ. DNA methylation and body-mass index: a genome-wide analysis. Lancet 383 (2014) 1990- 1998 
  5. Grundberg E, Meduri E, Sandling JK, …., Lathrop M, Dermitzakis ET, McCarthy MI, Spector TD, Bell JT, Deloukas P. Global analysis of DNA methylation variation in adipose tissue from twins reveals links to disease-associated variants in distal regulatory elements. Am J Hum Genet 93 (2013) 876-890
  6. Paul DS, Albers CA, Rendon A, …, Deloukas P. Maps of open chromatin highlight cell type-restricted patterns of regulatory sequence variation at hematological trait loci. Genome Res 23(7) 2013 1130-1141.
  7. Willer CJ*, Schmidt EM*, Sengupta S*, Peloso GM,….., Boehnke M*, Deloukas P*, Kathiresan S*, Mohlke KL*, Ingelsson E*, Abecasis GR*. Discovery and refinement of loci associated with lipid levels. Nat Genet 45 (2013) 1274-1283
  8. Deloukas P*, Kanoni S* et al. Large-scale association analysis identifies new risk loci for coronary artery disease. Nat Genet 45 (2012) 25-33.
  9. Grundberg E, Small KS, Hedman AK, …., McCarthy MI*, Deloukas P*, Dermitzakis ET*, Spector TD*; The Multiple Tissue Human Expression Resource (MuTHER) Consortium. Mapping cis- and trans-regulatory effects across multiple tissues in twins. Nat Genet 44 (2012) 1084-1089
  10. Coronary Artery Disease (C4D) Genetics Consortium. A genome-wide association study in Europeans and South Asians identifies five new loci for coronary artery disease. Nat Genet 43 (2011) 339-344
  11. Takeuchi F, McGinnis R, Bourgeois S, Barnes C, Eriksson N, Soranzo N, Whittaker P, Ranganath V, Kumanduri V, McLaren W, Holm L, Lindh J, Rane A, Wadelius M, Deloukas P. A genome-wide association study confirms VKORC1, CYP2C9, and CYP4F2 as principal genetic determinants of warfarin dose. PLoS Genet 5 (2009):e1000433Pt
  12. The Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium. Genomewide association study of 14,000 cases of seven common diseases and 3,000 shared controls. Nature 447 (2007) 661-678
  13. P. Deloukas, et al. The DNA sequence and comparative analysis of human chromosome 20. Nature 414 (2001) 865-871
  14. P. Deloukas, et al. A physical map of 30,000 human genes. Science 282 (1998) 744-746.

Sponsors

Collaborators

Back to top