Dr William J Young

Profile

Dr William Young is a Clinical Lecturer in Cardiology within the centre of Clinical Pharmacology and Precision Medicine at the William Harvey Research Institute and an Electrophysiology Cardiology Registrar at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Barts Heart Centre. 

Dr Young completed his medical degree at University College London in 2011 along with an intercalated BSc in Human Genetics for which he received 1^st class honours. He entered Cardiology specialty training after securing a NIHR funded Academic Clinical Fellow post in the North Central – East Thames Deanery. He completed his PhD in Cardiology at Queen Mary University of London in 2022. During this time, he completed the largest genetic studies to date for electrocardiographic-derived measures of ventricular repolarisation and depolarisation. In September 2022, he secured a position as a NIHR funded Academic Clinical Lecturer in the centre of Clinical Pharmacology and Precision Medicine.

His research interests include the genetic basis of cardiac electrophysiology and arrhythmogenesis, risk stratification using polygenic risk scores and inherited channelopathies.

Prizes and awards

• Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA), July 2022
• Early Career Award, CHARGE consortium, May 2021
• MRC funded Clinical Research Training Fellowship (2018 –2021)
• Certificate of special commendation for teaching, University College London, 2010
• Heaysman Prize for best BSc Final Year project, University College London, 2008

Research

Dr William J Young is a Clinical Lecturer at the Centre for Clinical Pharmacology and Precision Medicine working with Professor Patricia Munroe.

His research utilises genomics to improve our understanding of the underlying biology of cardiac electrophysiology and arrhythmia mechanisms. His interest extends to the utility of these findings in arrhythmic risk stratification including polygenic risks scores.

Key Publications

• Young WJ, Lahrouchi N, Isaacs A, Duong TV, Foco L, Ahmed F, Brody JA, Salman R et al. (2022). Genetic analyses of the electrocardiographic QT interval and its components identify additional loci and pathways. Nature Communications vol. 13, (1)10.1038/s41467-022-32821-z
• Young WJ, Warren HR, Mook-Kanamori DO, Ramírez J, Van Duijvenboden S, Orini M, Tinker A, Van Heemst D et al. (2021). Genetically Determined Serum Calcium Levels and Markers of Ventricular Repolarization: A Mendelian Randomization Study in the UK Biobank. Circulation: Genomic and Precision Medicine vol. 14, (3) 10.1161/CIRCGEN.120.003231
• Young WJ, van Duijvenboden S, Ramírez J, Jones A, Tinker A, Munroe PB, Lambiase PD, Orini M (2020). A Method to Minimise the Impact of ECG Marker Inaccuracies on the Spatial QRS-T angle: Evaluation on 1,512 Manually Annotated ECGs. Biomedical Signal Processing and Control vol. 64 10.1016/j.bspc.2020.102305
• Noordam R, Young WJ, Salman R, Kanters JK, van den Berg ME, van Heemst D, Lin HJ, Barreto SM et al. ( 2019 ) . Effects of Calcium, Magnesium, and Potassium Concentrations on Ventricular Repolarization in Unselected Individuals . Journal of the American College of Cardiology vol. 73, (24) 3118 - 3131. 10.1016/j.jacc.2019.03.519

Collaborators

External: Dr Borbala Mifsud (University of Qatar), Dr Raymond Noordam (Leiden University Medical Center).

CHARGE consortium: Dr Christopher Newton-Cheh (Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT), Dr Nona Sotoodehnia (Washington University), Dr Larisa Tereschenko (John Hopkins University), Dr Jerry Rotter & Dr Henry Lin (The Lundquist Institute UCLA Medical Center).

News

6 September 2022

Researchers discover new genetic loci, pathways, therapeutic targets, and relationships with cardiovascular disease based on QT interval anomalies