Professor Timothy Aitman
Tim Aitman is Professor of Clinical and Molecular Genetics at Imperial Colllege London, and Head of the Physiological Genomics and Medicine Group at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre. He is also lead clinician of services for management of Lipids and Cardiovascular Risk at the Hammersmith Hospital.
Tim Aitman graduated in Medicine with Distinction in Clinical Medicine, and in Physiology with first class Honours, both at the University of Birmingham. He gained Membership of the Royal College of Physicians in 1985 and was accredited as a Consultant Physician in 1993, specialising in Endocrinology and Diabetes. He started his training in molecular genetics in 1989, gaining his DPhil at the University of Oxford in 1992 for work on the molecular genetics of autoimmune juvenile-onset diabetes. In 2000, he was elected to Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians and in 2001 to Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences. Professor Aitman has served on numerous advisory Boards including the British Heart Foundation Project Grants and Fellowships Committees. In 2008, he was appointed as Specialist Adviser to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee Inquiry on Genomic Medicine.
He set up his own research Group at the MRC Clinical Research Centre in 1993, where the primary focus has been on discovery of genes for common diseases. The Group has mapped and identified disease genes for defective insulin action and diabetes, for the autoimmune disease systemic lupus, and for cardiac enlargement. His work was amongst the first to establish individual variation in gene copy number as a cause of a common human disease. In 2002 he published an invited review in the journal Science on progress in identifying genes underlying complex traits. The review has been widely cited and used as a benchmark for proof of identification of genes that underlie common diseases. In addition to publishing his research findings in the scientific literature, Professor Aitman has filed patents for two of these genes, and he is currently investigating protocols to alter expression of the gene Jund for the treatment of autoimmune kidney failure and arthritis. He currently leads two international consortia, an EU-funded Integrated Project to develop genomic tools to investigate gene function in health and disease, and a trans-Altlantic Network of Excellence funded by the Leducq Foundation to investigate the role of abnormal cellular signals in heart disease.
At Imperial College, he is Strategic Theme Leader for Genetics and Genomic Medicine and in this role has headed the Genetics Theme in successful bids to the National Institute of Health Research to become a Biomedical Research Centre, to the Wellcome Trust for a clinical PhD programme and to the British Heart Foundation to establish a Centre for Cardiovascular Research Excellence.
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