John Danesh

Last updated

John Danesh is a Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine and the head of the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge. He also holds several other leadership roles in scientific organizations, including director of the department's affiliate Strangeways Research Laboratory and founder and director of the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit. He is also an associate faculty member at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and an honorary consultant at the Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. [1] He became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 2007 [1] and of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2015. [2]

Contents

Professor Danesh has been the British Heart Foundation Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology since 2012. [3] In 2013 he won the Senior Investigator award from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). [4]

Education

Danesh was educated in New Zealand and Australia, studying medicine at the University of Otago in and the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He was a Rhodes scholar (awarded 1992 [5] ) who earned an MSc from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a DPhil from the University of Oxford, both in epidemiology. [1]

Research

Danesh's interest is in the genetic epidemiology of cardiovascular disease. He has conducted large-scale genetic studies of heart disease risk across multinational populations and his work has often been cited in guidelines for clinical practice. [6] Among his most widely cited research results is the observation that C-reactive protein is only moderately predictive of coronary heart disease. [7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C-reactive protein</span> Mammalian protein found in humans

C-reactive protein (CRP) is an annular (ring-shaped) pentameric protein found in blood plasma, whose circulating concentrations rise in response to inflammation. It is an acute-phase protein of hepatic origin that increases following interleukin-6 secretion by macrophages and T cells. Its physiological role is to bind to lysophosphatidylcholine expressed on the surface of dead or dying cells in order to activate the complement system via C1q.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Medical Research Council (United Kingdom)</span> National medical research agency

The Medical Research Council (MRC) is responsible for co-coordinating and funding medical research in the United Kingdom. It is part of United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI), which came into operation 1 April 2018, and brings together the UK's seven research councils, Innovate UK and Research England. UK Research and Innovation is answerable to, although politically independent from, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wellcome Trust</span> British healthcare research charity established in 1936

The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome to fund research to improve human and animal health. The aim of the Trust is to "support science to solve the urgent health challenges facing everyone." It had a financial endowment of £29.1 billion in 2020, making it the fourth wealthiest charitable foundation in the world. In 2012, the Wellcome Trust was described by the Financial Times as the United Kingdom's largest provider of non-governmental funding for scientific research, and one of the largest providers in the world. According to their annual report, the Wellcome Trust spent GBP £1.1Bn on charitable activities across their 2019/2020 financial year. According to the OECD, the Wellcome Trust's financing for 2019 development increased by 22% to US$327 million.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Framingham Heart Study</span> Cardiovascular cohort study

The Framingham Heart Study is a long-term, ongoing cardiovascular cohort study of residents of the city of Framingham, Massachusetts. The study began in 1948 with 5,209 adult subjects from Framingham, and is now on its third generation of participants. Prior to the study almost nothing was known about the epidemiology of hypertensive or arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Much of the now-common knowledge concerning heart disease, such as the effects of diet, exercise, and common medications such as aspirin, is based on this longitudinal study. It is a project of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, in collaboration with Boston University. Various health professionals from the hospitals and universities of Greater Boston staff the project.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wellcome Sanger Institute</span> British genomics research institute

The Wellcome Sanger Institute, previously known as The Sanger Centre and Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, is a non-profit British genomics and genetics research institute, primarily funded by the Wellcome Trust.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Ridker</span> American epidemiologist and academic

Paul M. Ridker is a cardiovascular epidemiologist and biomedical researcher. He is currently the Eugene Braunwald Professor of Medicine at Harvard University and Brigham and Women's Hospital, where he directs the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention. Ridker also holds an appointment as Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cambridge Biomedical Campus</span> Science park in Cambridge, UK

The Cambridge Biomedical Campus is the largest centre of medical research and health science in Europe. The site is located at the southern end of Hills Road in Cambridge, England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">K. Srinath Reddy</span>

K. Srinath Reddy is an Indian physician and the Former President of the Public Health Foundation of India and formerly headed the Department of Cardiology at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

Jeremiah Stamler was an American scientist specializing in preventive cardiology and the study of the influence of various risk factors on coronary heart disease and other cardiovascular diseases, and the role of salt and other nutrients in the etiology of hypertension and coronary heart disease. Stamler is credited with introducing the term "risk factors" into the field of cardiology. In 1988, he was awarded the Donald Reid Medal given by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for his contributions to epidemiology. He was professor emeritus of preventive medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. After his retirement from active teaching, he continued his research with his wife Rose until her death in 1998; in his later years he divided his time between Manhattan, Long Island, Chicago, and Pioppi in Southern Italy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hugh Christian Watkins</span>

Hugh Christian Watkins is a British cardiologist. He is a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, an associate editor of Circulation Research, and was Field Marshal Alexander Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine in the University of Oxford between 1996 and 2013.

Eleftheria Zeggini is a director of the institute of translational genomics in Helmholtz Zentrum München and a professor at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Previously she served as a research group leader at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute from 2008 to 2018 and an honorary professor in the department of health sciences at the University of Leicester in the UK.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Strangeways Research Laboratory</span>

Strangeways Research Laboratory is a research institution in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It was founded by Thomas Strangeways in 1905 as the Cambridge Research Hospital and acquired its current name in 1928. Organised as an independent charity, it was historically funded primarily by the Medical Research Council and is currently managed by the University of Cambridge, also its sole trustee. Formerly a site of research on rheumatic arthritis and connective tissue disorders, it has since 1997 focused on the study of genetic epidemiology.

Simin Liu is an American physician researcher. He holds leadership positions internationally in the research of nutrition, genetics, epidemiology, and environmental and biological influences of complex diseases related to cardiometabolic health in diverse population. His research team has uncovered new mechanisms and risk-factors as well as developed research frameworks for diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Liu's laboratory conducts research mainly in the United States, though the group has had research collaborations, teaching, and service activities in six of the Seven Continents.

Shoumo Bhattacharya is an Indian medical doctor and academic, and the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the BHF Centre of Research Excellence, University of Oxford.

Sharon Jayne Peacock is a British microbiologist who is Professor of Public Health and Microbiology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge. Peacock also sits on Cambridge University Council.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicole Soranzo</span> Italian British geneticist

Nicole Soranzo is an Italian-British senior group leader in human genetics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Cambridge. She is an internationally recognised Human Geneticist who has focused on the application of cutting edge genomic technologies to study the spectrum of human genetic variation associated with cardio-metabolic and immune diseases. She has led many large-scale discovery efforts including more than 1,000 novel genetic variants associated with cardio-metabolic diseases and their risk factors as well as establishing the HaemGen consortium, which is a worldwide effort to discover genetic determinants of blood cell formation and also interpretation of the downstream consequences of sequence variation through a host of integrative analyses and functional approaches.

Nicholas J. Wareham is a British epidemiologist who researches obesity, diabetes, and other metabolic disorders. He is director of the MRC Epidemiology Unit and co-director of the Institute of Metabolic Science at the University of Cambridge. He is also a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow in Clinical Science at the University of Cambridge, the director of the University's Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR), and the co-leader of the University's Aetiology of Diabetes and Related Metabolic Disorders Programme. He was educated at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Before joining the faculty at Cambridge, he worked at Harvard University.

Deborah A. Lawlor is a British epidemiologist and professor at the University of Bristol, where she is the deputy director of the Medical Research Council Integrative Epidemiology Unit. She is also a fellow of the Faculty of Public Health and of the Academy of Medical Sciences. Her main areas of research are perinatal, reproductive and cardio-metabolic health. Lawlor was awarded a CBE in the 2017 Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to social and community medicine research.

Professor Patrick Francis Chinnery, FRCP, FRCPath, FMedSci, is a neurologist, clinician scientist, and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow based in the Medical Research Council Mitochondrial Biology Unit and the University of Cambridge, where he is also Professor of Neurology and Head of the Department of Clinical Neurosciences.

Thomas F. Lüscher is a Swiss professor of cardiology, director of research, education and development and a consultant cardiologist at the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust and Imperial College London, and director of the Center for Molecular Cardiology at the University of Zurich.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "John Danesh". Cambridge Institute of Public Health. Archived from the original on 22 December 2015. Retrieved 15 December 2015.
  2. "New Fellows 2015". The Academy of Medical Sciences. 11 May 2015. Retrieved 15 December 2015.
  3. "John Danesh". British Heart Foundation. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  4. "Danesh, John - Wellcome Sanger Institute". www.sanger.ac.uk. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  5. "Professor John Danesh". The Rhodes Trust. Retrieved 15 December 2015.
  6. "Professor John Danesh, Associate Faculty". Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. Retrieved 15 December 2015.
  7. Danesh, J; Wheeler, JG; Hirschfield, GM; Eda, S; Eiriksdottir, G; Rumley, A; Lowe, GD; Pepys, MB; Gudnason, V (1 April 2004). "C-reactive protein and other circulating markers of inflammation in the prediction of coronary heart disease". The New England Journal of Medicine. 350 (14): 1387–97. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa032804 . PMID   15070788.