Najat Khan: The results of the world’s largest blood biomarker study have been published in Nature, opening up new possibilities for scientific research.

Najat Khan, Chief Data Science Officer & SVP/Global Head, Strategy, Portfolio, Ops, R&D, J&J at Johnson & Johnson, made the following post on LinkedIn:

“Today is a landmark day for science. The results of the world’s largest blood biomarker study have been published in Nature, opening up new possibilities for scientific research.

While significant progress has been made in recent years toward cracking the code of human genetics, our genes are just one part of a much more complex picture. For example, two people may be genetically predisposed to a certain health condition, yet one may develop it while the other doesn’t. Proteins – or blood biomarkers – play a key role here.

Our R&D Data Science & Digital Health team at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine proudly led a collaborative effort – involving 13 pharmaceutical companies and leveraging data from the UK Biobank – which has identified over 14,000 gene variants influencing blood protein levels, 80% of which were previously unknown.

Using the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning, this first-of-its-kind data set can be analyzed to potentially help us:

• Better understand disease onset and progression – and possibly identify new subtypes of diseases.
• Identify novel drug targets to drive progress toward precision medicine.
• Drive progress toward disease prevention by helping us learn how to stop diseases before they start.
• Develop new biomarkers to diagnose complex or difficult-to-detect diseases; and much more.

Incredibly proud of Chris Whelan from our DSDH team – who leads UKBB’s Pharma Proteomics Project and who spearheaded this initiative – as well as Liping H. and Dawn Waterworth and other J&J Innovative Medicine colleagues, past and present, for their contributions to this effort.

Read the Nature Paper here.

And check out this blog from Chris to learn more about this monumental achievement and what it means for #innovation, and for patients.”

Source: Najat Khan/LinkedIn