Professor Sarah Finer, MBBS MRCP PhD

Profile

Sarah studied medicine at University College London, and undertook specialist and academic training in Diabetes and Endocrinology in east London. She was an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, and was awarded an MRC Clinical Training Fellowship for her PhD. Prior to completing her specialist clinical training, she was an NIHR Clinical Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, and she then returned to east London to take up her current clinical and academic role. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on improving the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of type 2 diabetes in diverse populations.

Sarah is Co-Lead of the Genes & Health, a large (n=55k) population-based study British Bangladeshi and Pakistani people. This research programme, with funding (£28M) from MRC, Wellcome Trust and a Life Sciences Consortium, attracts >100 international research teams to work with its open access resources to deliver high quality science to improve health and disease.

Recent major research grants include:

• Wellcome Trust Discovery Award. Towards a type 2 diabetes precision diagnosis approach with glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) measurement. 227897/Z/23/Z. January 2024-December 2032, £4.5m. Co-Investigator (responsible for £3m budget)
• MRC. Genes & Health Longitudinal Population Study, MR/X009920/1. Awarded November 2022, £2.5million. Principal Investigator
• MRC. “Multimorbidity clusters, trajectories and genetic risk in British south Asians” (MR/S027297/1), March 2020-February 2023. £579,000. Principal Investigator

Sarah’s team brings together clinical and non-clinical researchers from a range of disciplines and backgrounds. Her team has a strong ethos of collegiality, mentorship, support and work-life balance. Sarah and her team work closely in partnership with her close academic collaborators at QMUL, Professor Rohini Mathur, Dr Moneeza Siddiqui and Professor David van Heel.

Sarah also works as a Consultant in Diabetes at Barts Health NHS Trust, specialising in type 1 diabetes (including pump therapy), complex type 2 diabetes and diabetes in pregnancy.

Research

Research Interests:

Sarah’s research interests are broad and interdisciplinary. Her and her team’s work focuses on improving the care of diverse populations living with, or at risk of, type 2 diabetes. Her team undertake clinical and translational research, underpinned by genomics and epidemiology applied to real world data. Where possible, her work also extends into and health services research to ensure it has impact in health systems.

Publications

Malawsky DS, van Walree E, Jacobs BM, Heng TH, Huang QQ, Sabir AH, Rahman S, Sharif SM, Khan A, Mirkov MU; 23andMe Research Team; Genes & Health Research Team; Kuwahara H, Gao X, Alkuraya FS, Posthuma D, Newman WG, Griffiths CJ, Mathur R, van Heel DA, Finer S, O'Connell J, Martin HC. Influence of autozygosity on common disease risk across the phenotypic spectrum. Cell. 2023 Oct 12;186(21):4514-4527.e14. PMID: 37757828

Huang QQ, Sallah N, Dunca D, Trivedi B, Hunt KA, Hodgson S, Lambert SA, Arciero E, Wright J, Griffiths C, Trembath RC, Hemingway H, Inouye M, Finer S, van Heel DA, Lumbers RT, Martin HC, Kuchenbaecker K. Transferability of genetic loci and polygenic scores for cardiometabolic traits in British Pakistani and Bangladeshi individuals. Nat Commun. 2022 Aug PMID: 35945198

Hodgson S, Huang QQ, Sallah N; Genes & Health Research Team, Griffiths CJ, Newman WG, Trembath RC, Wright J, Lumbers RT, Kuchenbaecker K, van Heel DA, Mathur R, Martin HC, Finer S. Integrating polygenic risk scores in the prediction of type 2 diabetes risk and subtypes in British Pakistanis and Bangladeshis: A population-based cohort study. PLoS Med. 2022. PMID: 35587468

Mathur R, Hull SA, Hodgson S, Finer S. Characterisation of type 2 diabetes subgroups and their association with ethnicity and clinical outcomes: a UK real-world data study using the East London Database. Br J Gen Pract. 2022 May  PMID: 35577589

Lam BYH^*, Williamson A^*, Finer S^*(*joint first authors), Day F, Tadross JA,Gonçalves Soares A, Wade K, Sweeney P, Bedenbaugh MN, Porter DT, Melvin A, Ellacott KLJ, Lippert RN, Buller S, Rosmaninho-Salgado J, Dowsett GKC, Ridley KE, Xu Z, Cimino I, Rimmington D, Rainbow K, Duckett K, Holmqvist S, Khan A, Dai X, Bochukova EG,  Genes & Health Research Team, Trembath RC, Martin HC, Coll AP, Rowitch DH, Wareham NJ, van Heel DA, Timpson N, Simerly RB, Ong KK, Cone, RD,  Langenberg C^*, Perry JRB^*, Yeo GS^*, O’Rahilly S^*. (2021). MC3R links nutritional state to childhood growth and the timing of puberty. Nature, 2021 November, PMID: 34732894

View all of Sarah Finer's Research Publications at:

https://researchpublications.qmul.ac.uk/publications/staff/24479.html

Supervision

Current supervisees:

• Dr Sam Hodgson, Wellcome Trust-QMUL Health Advances in Underrepresented Populations Clinical Research Fellowship and PhD student (primary supervisor)

• Ms Jing Hui Law, Wellcome Trust-QMUL Health Data In Practice Scheme PhD student (primary supervisor)

• Ms Binur Orazumbekova, Wellcome Trust-QMUL Health Data In Practice Scheme PhD student (primary supervisor)

• Ms Elizabeth Remfry, Wellcome Trust-QMUL Health Data In Practice Scheme PhD student (primary supervisor)

• Dr Miriam Samuel, NIHR School for Primary Care Research Clinical Research Fellowship (primary supervisor)

Recently supervised:

• Dr Sarah Calderon, LISS Doctoral Training Programme-QMUL funded PhD student (primary supervisor)