Chris Spencer
Dr, Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow
As a statistical geneticist I'm interested in a diverse range of problems, from population genetics to association analysis of clinical phenotypes. My work currently has a focus on African genetics and susceptibility to malaria which is conducted within the MalariaGEN consortium. I’m also interested in using genetics to improve health and healthcare via stratified medicine, currently in the context of hepatitis C infection, as part of the STOP-HCV consortium.
To facilitate analysis across phenotypes and populations we are developing and applying new methodology. We hope to quantify the role that infectious diseases have had on shaping our immune system and physiology through natural selection. By inferring the genetic determinants of host-parasite interactions we aim to better understand the underlying biology and to use the information to target prevention and treatment of disease.
Recent publications
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Resistance to malaria through structural variation of red blood cell invasion receptors
Journal article
Leffler EM. et al, (2017), Science, 356
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Interferon lambda 4 variant rs12979860 is not associated with RAV NS5A Y93H in hepatitis C virus genotype 3a
Journal article
Pedergnana V. et al, (2016), Hepatology, 64, 1377 - 1378
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Admixture into and within sub-Saharan Africa
Journal article
Busby GBJ. et al, (2016), eLife, 5
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Polymorphism in a lincRNA Associates with a Doubled Risk of Pneumococcal Bacteremia in Kenyan Children
Journal article
Rautanen A. et al, (2016), The American Journal of Human Genetics, 98, 1092 - 1100
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FINEMAP: efficient variable selection using summary data from genome-wide association studies.
Journal article
Benner C. et al, (2016), Bioinformatics, 32, 1493 - 1501