معرفی
Professor Cathryn Lewis is Professor of Genetic Epidemiology & Statistics at King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, where she leads the Statistical Genetics Unit. She co-chairs the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium Major Depressive Disorder Working group and serves as Co-Deputy Lead of the Trials, Genomics and Prediction theme at the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre.
Professor Lewis's research focuses on statistical methods for gene identification and characterization in complex genetic disorders. Her multi-disciplinary research group identifies and characterizes genetic variants conferring risk of disease, including depression, schizophrenia, and stroke. A major focus is risk assessment, determining how the polygenic component of mental health disorders can be measured accurately and used in clinical care. She has been instrumental in developing the GenoPred pipeline for polygenic scoring and leads research on biological aging in mental health conditions.
Her publication record shows a strong emphasis on trans-ancestry genetic studies, psychiatric genomics, and the clinical application of polygenic risk scores. Recent work explores antidepressant response prediction, the genetic relationship between depression and neurodegenerative disorders, and the development of tools like UPDOG for trans-ancestral polygenic score prediction. Her research bridges statistical genetics with clinical applications to improve mental health diagnosis and treatment.
Professor Lewis leads multiple major research projects including 'Accelerated biological aging: linking psychiatric disorders to age-related diseases and premature mortality' funded by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, and 'Understanding the causal mechanisms of antidepressant exposure and response' funded by Wellcome Trust. She also participates in the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre as a Co-Investigator.
She directs the Statistical Genetics Unit, a cross-school unit comprising 20 researchers in the Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre and the Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics. She is also involved with GenoPred, which aims to enhance the clinical utility of polygenic scores, and AMBER (Antidepressant Medications: Biology, Exposure & Response), which investigates the 'active ingredients' of antidepressants.
