Professor Kenneth Baillie

Group members

Wilna Oosthuyzen, Transaltional Genomics Programme Manager

Nick Parkinson, Clinical fellow

Josh Rogers, Research assistant

Clark D Russell, Clinical Lecturer in Infectious Diseases

Maaike Swets, PhD student

Marie Zechner, Communications director

Research interests

We use computational biology and genomics to understand the mechanisms that make people desperately sick in intensive care, so that we can find ways to help them survive and recover. Our focus is sepsis, viral lung infections, and the impact of a shortage of oxygen.

Systems biology

Computational biology is the main focus of the lab. Put simply, we’re trying to explain the molecular mechanisms underlying diseases in patients. We run a large-scale programme to discovery molecular consequences of genetic variation (molQTL). In order to test our predictions, we have a longstanding programme using genome editing in human and porcine cells and tissues to validate potential future drug targets.

Host Genomics

Host genetics provides the foundation for causal inference in our work. Since 2015 we have run the GenOMICC study to discover new human genetic associations with susceptibility to, and outcome from, critical illness. In 2020, only 5 months after the first Covid-19 patient recruited, we reported a functional genomic analysis in the GenOMICC that suggested a specific drug, baricitinib, would be an effective treatment for critical Covid-19. We went on to show that the treatment was effective in a clinical trial - to our knowledge, the first time this genetics-to-drug-treatment journey has been completed in any infectious disease or critical illness.

MAIC (Meta-Analysis by Information Content)

We have developed a new computational approach to do something that is intuitive to biologists, but difficult for computers: to integrate data from diverse sources, weight it according to quality and relevance, and combine it. Our meta-analysis by infomation content (MAIC) algorithm does this, and opens up a range of opportunities across the field of genomics and biology.

Hypoxia

Our theme of hypoxia research follows on from my early career work in high altitude medicine. In 2000 I set up a charity, Apex (altitude physiology expeditions), and organised a series of research expeditions. You can read about the past expeditions, and future ones, at the Apex website. Today we focus on physiological modelling and functional genomics. Our mathematical models of gas exchange are used for teaching all over the world, and were the foundation for our development of the S/F94 clincial endpoint.

Apex website

Selected recent publications