Professor Tim Spector
Biography
Trained in rheumatology and epidemiology and moved into genetic epidemiology in 1993 when he founded the UK Twins Registry of 11,000 twins, which is one of the richest collections of genotypic and phenotypic information on twins worldwide.
Its breadth of research has expanded to cover the genetics of a wide range of common complex traits many of which were previously thought to be mainly due to ageing and environment. Most recently through GWAS studies his group have found over 300 novel gene loci in over 30 disease areas including osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, melanoma, baldness, and telomere length.
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Published over 500 research articles on common diseases and is an NHS NIHR Senior Investigator.
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PI of the Wellcome Trust Muther study and of the multicentre EU Euroclot and Treat OA studies, and a partner in five others.
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Awarded in 2009 an ERC Senior Investigator award to study epigenetics.
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Written several books, focusing on osteoporosis and genetics for the scientific and public communities and presents regularly in the media.
Research Interests
Main interests are:
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gene discovery in the common complex traits and diseases via genetic epidemiology.
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study of age related diseases such as CVD, metabolic traits, locomotor problems such as osteoporosis and osteoarthritis, cognitive function and eye disorders.
Main aims are:
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Understand mechanisms of aging
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Find novel biomarkers of aging
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Find genes for aging and age-related diseases
Using a number of unique resources within the DTR including:
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20 year longitudinal Chingford population Study of 1000 women now aged 65-85 funded by the ARC.
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Telomere measurements on 3300 twins who have hundreds of age-related phenotypes- where we have produced major papers on the role of exercise, social class, smoking, obesity and disease.
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Healthy Aging Twin Study –HATs- a Wellcome Program grant to follow 4000 twins longitudinally for 10 years exploring genetic and environmental influences on rates of change in eyes, cognition, bone, joints, CVS, muscle and skin.
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Transcriptomics (Muther) study – a Wellcome Trust Program grant exploring gene expression in multiple tissues on 1000 twins associated with aging in conjunction with the Sanger Institute and Oxford.
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GWAS- of aging traits, cytokines and Telomere length in 5000+ twins.