Study Aims

Study Aims: Discover molecular features and elucidate dysregulated biological pathways underlying the high risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes in South Asian individuals

Our research vision is to understand why people of South Asian origin are at high risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), type 2 diabetes, and related illnesses.

South Asians number ~1.8 billion individuals and are ~1/4 of the global population. In the UK, South Asians comprise the largest minority population. The approximate 2-fold higher risk of CHD, and ~3-fold higher risk of diabetes, among South Asians compared to Europeans cannot be fully explained by lifestyle, environmental, biological or known genetic factors. This knowledge gap is the single most important obstacle in reversing the epidemic of these major diseases among South Asians and constitutes a major health inequality.

Our research is designed to address this knowledge gap by exploring novel biological pathways underlying incident CHD, diabetes, and related disorders in South Asians which will be identified by integrating multiple sources of data (genome sequencing, proteome and metabolome) and will capture the interplay of genetic predisposition and the biological imprints of environmental and lifestyle exposures (i.e. the internal exposome).