Multi-omics signatures of lifestyle determinants for preventable cardio-metabolic diseases
- 8 September 2025 to 2 December 2025
- Project No: D26021
- DPhil Project 2026
- Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU)
Background
Adiposity and diabetes are major, increasing, public health challenges globally, contributing to excess premature mortality from vascular and other metabolic causes. The determinants of such major cardio-metabolic diseases (e.g. diabetes, ischemic heart disease, stroke and other vascular causes) include modifiable lifestyle factors such as physical activity, dietary patterns, smoking and drinking habits. Understanding of the potential mechanisms underlying the associations between these lifestyle determinants and cardio-metabolic diseases would provide valuable insight in disease aetiology, and also facilitate the development of public health strategies for disease prevention.
Recent developments in high-throughput metabolomic and proteomic assays, permit assessment of the interplay between lifestyle habits, intermediate biomarkers and cardio-metabolic disease risk. The UK Biobank study includes detailed information on lifestyle characteristics, traditional biochemistry measures, NMR-measured metabolites (>250 traits), genetic assays, Olink-measured proteins (>3,000 traits) and cardio-metabolic diseases among 0.5 million adults recruited in 2006-10 and followed prospectively.
This project will apply epidemiological, Mendelian Randomization and multi-omic integration techniques, to examine the associations of various lifestyle characteristics with a wide range of novel and NMR-biomarkers (e.g. lipids, including their classes and particle sizes, markers of inflammation, glucose, and liver function), and proteomic panels (e.g. cardio-metabolic, inflammatory, neurological or neoplastic), in order to further understand the relevance of these lifestyle factors to incidence or mortality from different subtype of cardio-metabolic diseases. Mediation analyses will estimate how much of the associations of various lifestyle characteristics are explained by various biomarkers. Additionally, genetic approaches could be performed to assess potential novel causal pathways underlying the associations of interest.
research experience, research methods and skills training
The student will gain experience in non-communicable diseases epidemiology using large-scale prospective data. The project will provide an extensive range of training opportunities through attending specific courses, meetings, workshops and seminars, along with regular supervisory meetings. The student will develop skills in conducting systematic literature reviews, study design and planning, statistical programming, data analysis, including Mendelian Randomization and different types of mediation analyses, and presentation skills. The student will be supported to publish peer-reviewed papers during their DPhil.
FIELD WORK, SECONDMENTS, INDUSTRY PLACEMENTS AND TRAINING
Training in advanced statistics, genetic epidemiology, statistical programming, and scientific writing will be provided. Attendance at seminars, workshops and courses provided by the Department and University will also be encouraged. The candidate will have the opportunity to present their research work at relevant international/national conferences.
PROSPECTIVE STUDENT
The ideal candidate will have a Master’s degree in biomedical sciences, medical statistics or genetic epidemiology. Advanced bioinformatics for conducting analyses with R, STATA, or Python, are essential.