Research Seminar: Dr Athanasios Kousathanas and John Bridgewater
The October research seminar featured our first internal speaker, Dr Athanasios Kousathanas, who presented the Genomics England COVID-19 analysis on the GENOMICC severe COVID cohort, titled: Whole genome sequencing in critically ill patients reveals therapeutic targets for Covid-19. Dr Kousathanas presented the findings of this study which identified genetic sequences associated with more severe reactions to COVID-19 infection. This research has been submitted to Nature and will soon be published and available on our Publications page.
Our second speaker was John Bridgewater who presented his work as a clinician and researcher in the Upper Gastrointestinal Cancer domain, of which he is the lead. Professor Bridgewater’s presentation, Prognosis and molecular characteristics of patients with TRK fusion cancer in the 100,000 Genomes Project, indicated common fusion mutations of the TRK protein across cancer types. This study highlighted the pathways that these mutations affect which can lead to cancers and indicated possible targets for therapeutic treatments, currently under development by Bayer. The study reported on patient characteristics and demographics as well as performing and overall survival analysis.
About the research seminars
The Genomics England Research Seminar series is a season of events held to demonstrate the best research from Genomics England and our partners. They started in October 2018, and are monthly, free-to-attend evenings of talks presented by GECIP members on the latest research being performed on the 100,000 Genomes Project data from our academic community (GECIP), commercial partners (Discovery Forum), COVID analysis and Genomics England research on other cohorts.
The seminars will be held on the last Tuesday of each month at 2-3:30pm. These will be online sessions open to everyone and free to attend, we hope to have representation from across the GECIP, Discovery Forum and 100,000 Genomes Project participants as well as anyone else who would be interested in joining.
For updates on the seminars including announcements and speakers please follow the GECIP team Twitter. You can watch all previous Research Seminars on the Genomics England YouTube channel.
If you would like to present your research from the Genomics England Research Environment at one of these events please get in touch with the GECIP team at [email protected] and if you intend to publish on this research please include this so that we can publicise your paper on our Publications page.
