Andrii Iakovliev

I am an MRC Cross-Disciplinary Fellow (XDF) at the Institute of Genetics and Cancer, University of Edinburgh. With a background in engineering and computer science, I work in statistical genetics and genetics of complex traits, with a focus on immune-mediated inflammatory and other complex diseases.

Genetic risk for common diseases is spread across thousands of sites in the genome where people differ, each with a tiny effect. Most of this signal acts indirectly through the regulation of distant genes. Yet most analyses still link variants individually to the nearby genes they affect. I develop methods that instead aggregate these many small, long-range effects to pinpoint disease-critical genes.

My recent work includes genome-wide aggregated trans-effects (GATE) analysis to discover disease-critical or core genes for complex diseases. It uses GENOSCORES — a platform and suite of tools for genetic analyses, used for genetic prediction and fine-mapping of genome-wide association studies.

Together with my collaborators, I have applied GATE analysis to type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus and other diseases, identifying genes that reframe our understanding of their pathophysiologies and uncovering new drug targets.

As an independent fellow I collaborate across several groups, including Prof. Helen Colhoun’s Target Genetics and Precision Medicine group, the Sara Brown Research Group, and the Genetic Targets and Precision Medicine group of Prof. Paul McKeigue and Dr Athina Spiliopoulou.

Find me on ORCID and Google Scholar, or see my research, publications and CV.