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Dr Stavroula Kanoni, PhD, PGCAP, FHEA

Stavroula

Reader in Nutrigenetics and Cardiovascular Health, Academic Lead (Dep) Environment & Health Multi-Disciplinary Theme (School of Medicine and Dentistry), Fellow Digital Environment Research Institute (DERI)

Centre: Clinical Pharmacology and Precision Medicine

Email: s.kanoni@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7882 6493
Twitter: @StavroulaKanoni

Profile

ORCID iD: 0000-0002-1691-9615

Reader (Associate Professor) in Nutrigenetics and Cardiovascular Health with over a decade of expertise in the genetics of cardiovascular and cardiometabolic diseases, particularly through the interplay of lifestyle and diet. I focus on elucidating disease mechanisms in multi-ancestry cohorts to develop innovative preventive and therapeutic strategies that mitigate environmental impacts on health. My work integrates multidisciplinary approaches—including genetic, epigenetic, biochemical, metabolomic, environmental, and lifestyle data—to establish new models for diagnosis and treatment. By leveraging big data and advanced AI methodologies, I am dedicated to pioneering clinical tools for cardiovascular disease, advancing precision medicine, and exploring commercialization opportunities.

I graduated in 2003 from the Harokopio University of Athens, Greece, with a B.Sc. in Science of Nutrition and Dietetics, followed by an M.Sc. in Clinical Dietetics (2006). I pursued my research in the field of nutrigenetics, investigating interactions among genes, nutrition and lifestyle characteristics in an elderly Greek cohort (under the ZINCAGE FP6 EU Grant) and was awarded a PhD in Nutrigenetics in 2010, from the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics of Harokopio University of Athens, Greece. I joined the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in 2010 as a post-doctoral research fellow, in the group of genetics of complex traits in humans, where I gained expertise on statistical genetics with a focus on cardiovascular genetics. In September 2013, I joined the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at Queen Mary University of London, as a senior statistical geneticist in the William Harvey Research Institute. In February 2019, I was appointed a Lecturer in Nutrigenetics and Cardiovascular Health and in September 2022 I was promoted to a Reader.

Between 2021-2024, I served as the Academic Lead (Dep) of the Environment and Health Multidisciplinary Theme in the School of Medicine and Dentistry of Queen Mary University of London, aiming to nurture cross-faculty initiatives and forge external partnerships that help develop innovative and holistic approaches to enable effective management of chronic diseases, in line with the University’s 2030 strategy.

I am currently co-organising the WHRI PhD Symposium. I am the General Secretary of the Santorini Conferences Association – For Research Innovation in Health (https://www.santoriniconference.org/), organising the series of international conferences on Systems Medicine, Personalised Health and Therapy.

Other 

Research

Group members (present and alumni)

  • Duaa Abdulmajeed (PhD student)
  • Thomas Kaplan (PDRA)
  • Trupti Kolvekar (BHF PhD student)
  • Hao-Chuan Liu (PhD student)
  • Diana Dunca (PDRA)
  • Aicha Ben Taher (MRes student)
  • Zainab Awan (PDRA)

Summary

My research focuses on cardiometabolic traits and their underlying risk factors and pathophysiology, with a strong emphasis on multi-ancestry cohorts and equitable precision medicine. By integrating multi-modal data, including genetic, epigenetic, biochemical, metabolomic, proteomic, clinical, environmental, and lifestyle data, I develop novel AI-driven tools for cardiovascular disease risk stratification and personalised interventions. My long-standing expertise in cardiovascular genomics enables me to leverage large-scale datasets and advance clinical applications in the era of precision medicine.

My research portfolio includes:

  • Leading (PI) a project grant from the LEAP Collaborate to Innovate Fund, entitled “AI tool for cardiovascular risk using polygenic and transcriptomic profiling”.
  • Leading the genetic analysis and Polygenic Risk Scores (PRS) modelling for coronary artery disease and lipids in the Genes and Health cohort.
  • Leading and contributing to several projects within the CARDIoGRAMPlusC4D consortium, investigating the genetic architecture of CAD in multi-ancestry populations.
  • Leading and contributing to several projects within the GLGC consortium, investigating the genetically determined variability in blood lipid levels in multi-ancestry populations.
  • Leading (PI) the contribution of the Genes and Health Study to the INTERVENE international and interdisciplinary consortium (EU Horizon 2020), performing AI-facilitated analyses of complex medical data to develop genetic risk scores for a range of diseases across a large number of multi-ancestry Biobanks.
  • Contributing to projects within the GIANT consortium, investigating the genetic architecture of anthropometric traits.

Publications

Recent publications (10 out of 133, H-Index of 77):

Full list of publications

  1. Suzuki, K., Hatzikotoulas, K., Southam, L., Taylor, H. J., Yin, X., …, Kanoni, S., et al. Genetic drivers of heterogeneity in type 2 diabetes pathophysiology. Nature 627, 347-357 (2024). org:10.1038/s41586-024-07019-6
  2. Smith, J. L., Tcheandjieu, C., Dikilitas, O., Iyer, K., Miyazawa, K., …, Kanoni, S., et al. Multi-Ancestry Polygenic Risk Score for Coronary Heart Disease Based on an Ancestrally Diverse Genome-Wide Association Study and Population-Specific Optimization. Circ Genom Precis Med 17, e004272 (2024). org:10.1161/circgen.123.004272
  3. Jermy, B., Läll, K., Wolford, B. N., Wang, Y., Zguro, K., Cheng, Y., Kanai, M., Kanoni, S., et al. A unified framework for estimating country-specific cumulative incidence for 18 diseases stratified by polygenic risk. Nat Commun 15, 5007 (2024). org:10.1038/s41467-024-48938-2
  4. Jacobs, B. M., Stow, D., Hodgson, S., Zöllner, J., Samuel, M., Kanoni, S., et al. Genetic architecture of routinely acquired blood tests in a British South Asian cohort. Nat Commun 15, 8929 (2024). org:10.1038/s41467-024-53091-x
  5. Adlam, D., Berrandou, T. E., Georges, A., Nelson, C. P., Giannoulatou, E., …, Kanoni, S., et al. Genome-wide association meta-analysis of spontaneous coronary artery dissection identifies risk variants and genes related to artery integrity and tissue-mediated coagulation. Nat Genet 55, 964-972 (2023). org:10.1038/s41588-023-01410-1
  6. Yengo, L., Vedantam, S., Marouli, E., Sidorenko, J., Bartell, E., …, Kanoni, S., et al. A saturated map of common genetic variants associated with human height. Nature 610, 704-712 (2022). org:10.1038/s41586-022-05275-y
  7. Ramdas, S., Judd, J., Graham, S. E., Kanoni, S., et al. A multi-layer functional genomic analysis to understand noncoding genetic variation in lipids. Am J Hum Genet 109, 1366-1387 (2022). org:10.1016/j.ajhg.2022.06.012 Listed as joined first co-author
  8. Kanoni, S., Graham, S. E., Wang, Y., Surakka, I., Ramdas, S., Zhu, X., Clarke, S. L., et al. Implicating genes, pleiotropy, and sexual dimorphism at blood lipid loci through multi-ancestry meta-analysis. Genome Biol 23, 268 (2022). https://doi.org:10.1186/s13059-022-02837-1
  9. Aragam, K. G., Jiang, T., Goel, A., Kanoni, S., et al. Discovery and systematic characterization of risk variants and genes for coronary artery disease in over a million participants. Nat Genet 54, 1803-1815 (2022). org:10.1038/s41588-022-01233-6 Listed joined first co-author
  10. Graham, S. E., Clarke, S. L., Wu, K. H., Kanoni, S., et al. The power of genetic diversity in genome-wide association studies of lipids. Nature 600, 675-679 (2021). org:10.1038/s41586-021-04064-3 Listed joined second co-author
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    Sponsors

    Collaborators

    Internal

    External

    • Prof Riyaz Patel (UCL)
    • Prof Gemma Hopewell (Oxford)
    • Prof Adam Butterworth (Cambridge)
    • Dr Chris Nelson (Leicester)
    • Dr Gina Peloso (BU, USA)
    • Prof Tim Assimes (Stanford, USA)
    • Prof Samuli Ripatti (FIN); Andrea Ganna (FIN)
    • Dr Brooke Wolford (Norway)
    • Dr Ammira Akil (Qatar)
    • Dr Mohamad Saad (Qatar)

    CARDIoGRAMplusC4D, GLGC, INTERVENE, Genes and Health, QPHI

    News

    Teaching

    I have a Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice (PGCAP) and I am an HEA (Higher Education Academy) Fellow. I contribute to many courses of the School of Medicine and Dentistry, and I am also leading the design and establishment of new educational offerings for the University.

    Undergraduate Education:

    Postgraduate Education:

    Disclosures

    None.

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