The Centre for Genomics and Global Health (CGGH) is a joint research programme of Oxford University and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.
Our goal is to translate advances in genome science into practical applications that will help to reduce the burden of infectious disease in the developing world.
This is a temporary website with basic information about the Centre for Genomics and Global Health. Please visit again when our new website is released in April 2009.
The purpose of the Centre for Genomics and Global Health is to help to solve practical problems in global health by using new approaches in genomics, epidemiology and statistical genetics. It is a joint research programme of Oxford University and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, directed by Dominic Kwiatkowski.
The main focus of our research is to develop tools for genomic epidemiology that will assist the global campaign to eliminate malaria. We aim to inform public health policy by tracking the emergence and spread of antimalarial drug resistance, and to accelerate vaccine development by discovering natural mechanisms of protective immunity against malaria. Although our main focus is on malaria, the methods and tools that we are developing also have applications for other infectious diseases.
A large part of our work is to provide support for data-sharing networks that enable clinicians and researchers around the world to collaborate effectively on large-scale research projects. MalariaGEN and WWARN, the two largest networks that we support, are described below. We develop web databases and tools for data analysis, and we provide expertise and training in critical areas such as statistics and ethics.
Genomic epidemiology brings together many different scientific disciplines and our team comes from a wide variety of backgrounds, ranging from clinical research and ethics to mathematics and software engineering. Our team at Oxford University is located in the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, and our team at the Sanger Institute is based within the Malaria Programme. We also have two Senior Informatics Fellows based overseas: at Mahidol Oxford Research Unit in Thailand; and at Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam.
As an MRC Translational Medicine Centre we receive core support from the Medical Research Council. A large part of the funding for our work comes from the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
MalariaGEN - the Malaria Genomic Epidemiology Network - is a partnership of researchers in 21 countries who are using genomic epidemiology to understand how protective immunity against malaria works, which is a fundamental problem in malaria vaccine development. This work is jointly funded by the Wellcome Trust and by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, through the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, as part of the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative.
CGGH acts as the MalariaGEN Resource Centre, providing scientific and operational support for MalariaGEN's research and training activities, with expert teams in sample and data management, informatics, statistics, ethics and programme management.
WWARN - the Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network - aims to optimize the use of antimalarial drugs by providing quality-assured information on drug resistance, through partnership with the World Health Organisation and with research groups, national control programs, and surveillance networks in over 20 countries. The network is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
CGGH provides informatics support for WWARN, with the responsibility of designing effective database systems and user-friendly web interfaces for gathering, standardizing, integrating and analyzing data from the four major scientific modules. These include: clinical drug efficacy studies; pharmacokinetic studies of antimalarial drugs in target populations; in vitro tests of drug resistance; and molecular markers of drug resistance in patients and in populations.
We are based:
We take about 2 or 3 new PhD students each year, and we welcome enquiries from prospective students with a strong scientific background. Much of our work involves advanced statistics and computation, so we encourage applicants with backgrounds in maths, physics or engineering, as well as those who have studied biology or medicine. Please address enquires to catherine.hughes@well.ox.ac.uk
If you are interested in doing a PhD with us, you can apply for funding through one of the following schemes: