Researchers within the BRC are hunting for genetic clues to a number of common diseases which they hope will lead to better screening, diagnosis and treatment.
Genetic studies are central to our work as we seek to find ways to improve care across a number of disease areas, such as common and complex inflammatory conditions, degenerative disorders and cancer.
Researchers involved in this £500,000 research programme are studying tissue from patients with a number of diseases and are using genome-wide association studies and the BRC's new ultra-high through-put DNA sequencer to find genetic variants in these patients.
They aim to identify the precise genes and variants involved and the extent to which these affect disease susceptibility, how an individual's condition will progress and how they will respond to treatment.
The expectation is that this work will lead to doctors being able to diagnose patients with breast cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis and osteoporosis earlier, as well as to better predict their progress and identify how they will respond to particular treatments.