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Professor Patricia B Munroe

Patricia B

Professor of Molecular Medicine and Centre Lead for Clinical Pharmacology and Precision Medicine

Centre: Clinical Pharmacology and Precision Medicine

Email: p.b.munroe@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44(0) 20 7882 3586
Twitter: @munroe_patsy

Profile

ORCID iD: 0000-0002-4176-2947 

Patricia graduated with a B.Sc. in Biochemistry, and M.Sc. in Biotechnology from the University of Galway, Ireland. She then worked at the Wellcome Trust Research Laboratories for six months before commencing a PhD in cardiovascular genetics at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. Patricia was awarded a PhD in Medicine in 1995 and following successful post-doctoral fellowships at University College London (NIH funded), she joined the William Harvey Research Institute as a Lecturer in 1998. In 2007 she was appointed Professor of Molecular Medicine.

Prof Munroe’s lab investigates the molecular basis of cardiac arrythmia’s, hypertension and heart failure. Our research includes genomic studies of cardiovascular risk factors as a route for elucidating disease mechanisms, the development of ‘omic biomarkers and clinical models for improved risk prediction, pharmacogenetics and personalised medicine.

She co-leads several international complex genetic disease consortia. Using meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and large-scale candidate gene studies she has discovered over 1000 genetic loci associated with hypertension.  She has also identified hundreds of genetic loci for the electrocardiogram and cardiac magnetic resonance measures of heart structure and function.  . As a member of the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium she co-leads projects leading to the discovery of loci for electrocardiogram markers and gene x environment interactions for cardiovascular risk factors. She is the Director of the Genome Centre at FMD and an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, The University of Toledo, USA.

She was listed as a Highly Cited Researcher by Thomson Reuters in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 (Top 1% in Molecular Biology & Genetics). She was elected as a Fellow of Academy of Medical Sciences in 2021.

Research

Group members

Research staff: Dr Chris Bell, Dr Helen Warren, Dr Will Young

PhD students: Hafiz Naderi, Richard Burns, Sandra Machlitt-Northen, Victoria Taylor-Bateman, Aled Jones, Mihir Sanghvi

Summary 

My research group investigates the molecular basis of cardiac arrythmia’s, hypertension and heart failure.

Gene discovery projects for blood pressure, heart rate, ECG markers, cardiac magnetic resonance imaging markers and cardiometabolic traits. We perform genome-wide association studies (GWAS), exome and whole gene sequencing analyses to find new loci and detailed bioinformatic analyses to locate likely causative genetic variants and genes.

Functional studies of candidate genes from GWAS via excellent collaborations we use molecular, cellular biology techniques and “in vitro” models to understand the function of candidate genes from our work.

Risk modelling for cardiovascular disease. We are developing and testing polygenic risk scores and clinical models for improved risk prediction for cardiac arrhythmias, hypertension and heart failure and are using Mendelian Randomisation for assessing causal relationships.

Pharmacogenetics. Our focus is on blood pressure / anti-hypertensive drugs, lipids / statins). We perform GWAS and work closely with international pharmacogenetics consortia (ICAPS, CHARGE – PGX working group, and Genomic Investigation of Statin Therapy (GIST) consortium).

Key Publications

For a full list of publications click here


*denotes joint first or last author and # denotes the corresponding author.

Sponsors

Collaborators

Internal: Prof Andy Tinker, Prof Steffen Petersen, Prof Mike Barnes, Prof Mark Caulfield, Prof Adrian Hobbs, Dr Claudia Cabrera, Prof Amrita Ahluwalia, Dr Caroline Roney, Prof Michael Pluess

External: Prof Pier Lambiase (UCL), Prof Andrew Morris (University of Manchester), Prof Alistair Young (Kings College), Dr Chris Newton-Cheh (Harvard University), Dr Borbala Mifsud (University of Qatar), Prof Nona Sotoodehnia (University of Washington, USA), Dr DC Rao (Washington University, USA), Dr Rosanne Jepson (Royal Veterinary College),Prof Shu Ye (Leicester), Professor Nilesh Samani (Leicester University). 

Electrogenomics Group – collaboration with UCL for studies attempting to unravel the electrical and genetic causes of cardiovascular mortality. 

Visit the Electrogenomics Group webpage

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