Introduction
editTim Spector is Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London and Director of the TwinsUK Registry one of the world’s richest data collections on 11,000 twins. He is Head of the Department of Twin Research & Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London with 60 members of staff. He is also a Physician and Honorary Consultant Rheumatologist at Guy’s Hospital, part of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. Professor Spector is best known for his twin research into the genetics of ageing diseases and most lately his work in the field of Epigenetics.
Education and Awards
editProfessor Spector completed his medical training MBBS at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1982, an MSc at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in Epidemiology (1986), and an MD doctorate of Medicine at the University of London (1989). He was awarded a Fellowship(FRCP) at the Royal College of Physicians (UK) in 1997. He is a National Institute for Health Research Senior Investigator and was awarded an European Research Council Senior Researcher award in 2010.
Research work
editProfessor Spector has a long career in research having published over 650 papers. Initially his research focused on common musculoskeletal diseases - where as well as performing many novel pharmaceutical trials in osteoarthritis and osteoporosis, was often the first to show the genetic basis of a wide range of common diseases and traits, previously thought to be mainly due to Ageing and environment such as arthritis, cataract and body shape. Professor Spector and his group have found over 400 novel genes in over 30 diseases, such as osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, melanoma, obesity, diabetes, [Bbaldness|baldness]], and longevity among many others as part of large international collaborations. Professor Spector is Principal Investigator of the MuTHER study – currently the largest study of multiple tissue gene expression as well as three large European Union projects. He is currently conducting the EpiTwin study, in collaboration with the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI). This project is one of the most ambitious large-scale methylation sequencing projects in Human Genetics using twins to look at the role of epigenetic factors in the aetiology of common complex diseases such as obesity, diabetes, allergies, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, telomeres and longevity.
Media and books
editProfessor Spector’s research has been widely and regularly disseminated in the media with many newspaper and magasine articles as well as many radio and television appearances in the UK, such as recently the BBC Radio Today programme and television programmes such as the BBC One Show, BBC Horizon and abroad France 2, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC)| and Cable News Network (CNN). In 2009 Professor Tim Spector advised and featured in a two part BBC documentary on twins and science “The Secret Life of Twins” in which 500 United_Kingdom twins were the centre-piece. The documentary was first broadcasted in October 2009 and has been aired in over 26 countries. Professor Spector is the author of several scientific books of which two are aimed to bringing science and epigenetics to the lay reader: Your Genes Unzipped (2004) and Identically Different: Why You Can change Your Genes (June 2012), Wiedenfeld & Nicolson.
Personal
editProfessor Spector was born in London and holds dual Australian citizenship. He speaks French and Spanish.
References
edit- Spector TD, Williams FM.The UK Adult Twin Registry (TwinsUK) Twin Res Hum Genet. 2006 Dec;9(6):899-906.
- Moayyeri A, Hammond CJ, Valdes AM, Spector TD. Cohort Profile: TwinsUK and Healthy Ageing Twin Study. Int J Epidemiology 2012 epub Jan 9th doi: 10.1093/ije/dyr207
- Bell J, Spector TD. A twin approach to unraveling epigenetics. Trends in Genetics. March 2011, 27 (3): 116-125