Towards precision medicine in primary care: genetic epidemiology of treatment failure in primary care

Many prescribed drugs lack efficacy or generate adverse effects. Central to the concept of precision medicine is the maximisation of benefit from drugs, whilst minimising side effects. The studentship, based within the Leicester Precision Medicine Institute (Director, Martin Tobin) in the new £42m Centre for Medicine, will address these themes for up to three classes of commonly-prescribed drugs. UK primary care data provides unique opportunities for observational pharmacogenetic studies. Working with data from participants in the local Extended Study of E-health, Environment and DNA (EXCEED) cohort, the student will develop and validate research methods which can identify signatures of adverse reactions or lack of efficacy in linked primary care electronic medical records. These will then be utilised to undertake well powered pharmacogenetic studies using primary care data in additional large electronic medical record based studies, including UK Biobank. The student will be based in an internationally-leading genetic epidemiology group with a track record of training award-winning students and fellows. The project will be an excellent vehicle for advanced training in genetic epidemiology and "big data". Applicants should have a background in statistics, computational biology, bioinformatics or closely related area coupled with knowledge of epidemiology and good computer programming skills.