Falling Walls Falling Walls Science Summit 2023

Falling Walls Circle Plenary Table

Precision Prevention in Health: The Power of Genomics

Nicola Blackwood, Segun Fatumo, Nancy Cox, David Crosby, Mark McCarthy, Eleftheria Zeggini

2023 Circle Plenary Tables

Precision Prevention in Health: The Power of Genomics – Falling Walls Circle Plenary Table 2023

As we are living through the 4th industrial revolution, the congruence of technological advances in genomics and the digital revolution has the potential to transform healthcare. Genomics can benefit precision prevention and improve human health by building on discoveries in genetics research and applying them in a clinical setting. This panel discussion will explore the opportunities to couple genomics at scale with promising exciting technology developments to catalyse a change in addressing grand challenges in modern healthcare.

Supported by Helmholtz Munich

Nicola Blackwood

Genomics England and House of Lords Science & Technology Select Committee

Nicola is a leader in science and entrepreneurship. She is a member of the House of Lords, and Chair of Genomics England and Oxford University Innovation. She is also a Board member of the biotechnology company, BioNTech.
Nicola served as Minister for Innovation in the Department for Health and Social Care under two Prime Ministers where she led on Lifesciences, NHS Data and Digital Transformation, and Global Health Security.
She was the first female MP for Oxford, and was elected by MPs of all parties to Chair the Commons Science and Tech Committee. She remains one of the youngest committee chairs in British history and the only woman to have chaired the Commons Science & Tech Committee.

Segun Fatumo

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Segun Fatumo is a computational geneticist with broad research interest in NCDs Genomics in African Populations and speciality in genomics of kidney functions. He is an Associate Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the head of NCD Genomics at MRC Uganda. He co-led first major GWAS of cardiometabolic traits in Africa and led the first GWAS of Kidney functions in continental African populations. Segun Fatumo is strongly committed to increasing diversity in genomic studies and was recently awarded the prestigious MRC Impact prize for advocating for inclusion of Africa in genomic research and championing genetic risk prediction of complex diseases in Africa.

Nancy Cox

Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Nancy J. Cox is a quantitative human geneticist with a long-standing research interest in understanding the genetics of human disease. Current research focuses on integrating genome function with genome variation and electronic health records through BioVU, the biobank at Vanderbilt University, with DNA samples on > 325,000 people. Dr. Cox is the winner of the 2023 Leadership Award from the American Society of Human Genetics, the 2010 Leadership Award from the International Genetic Epidemiology Society, the 2008 Landon Award from the American Association for Cancer Research, and a Fellow of the AAAS.

David Crosby

Cancer Research UK

David Crosby is head of prevention and early detection research at Cancer Research UK (CRUK). He also works part-time for the UK government, advising the Office for Life Sciences on the UK’s Cancer Mission. David began life as a baby, before becoming a pharmacologist. He spent time in academia, and industry, identifying and evaluating new clinical development opportunities. He moved into the public sector, joining the UK’s Medical Research Council, where he oversaw various science areas and research funding programmes (including inflammation, cardiovascular, respiratory, methodology and experimental medicine). He is now delivering a new strategy and research investments to combat cancer.

Mark McCarthy

Genentech

Mark McCarthy is Executive Director of Human Genetics, and Principal Fellow at Genentech. Prior to 2019, he was Robert Turner Professor of Diabetes Medicine at the University of Oxford where his academic research focused on genetic and genomic analysis of type 2 diabetes and related traits, including obesity and birthweight.
In industry, he applies knowledge and insights gathered from research and clinical practice to deliver improved strategies for target identification and validation, risk stratification and biomarker discovery so as to bring new medicines to patients.

Eleftheria Zeggini

Helmholtz Munich

Eleftheria Zeggini is the founding Director of the Institute of Translational Genomics at Helmholtz Munich and holds the TUM Liesel Beckmann Distinguished Professorship at the Technical University Munich School of Medicine. Her research leverages big biomedical data to translate insights from genomics into mechanisms of disease development and progression, shortening the path to translation and empowering precision medicine.

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