Spotlight: Muzlifah Haniffa
Professor Muzlifah Haniffa is the Deputy Director, Head of the Cellular Genomics Programme, and Senior Group Leader at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. In 2023, she started her first project with Open Targets.
What do you work on?
I’m a dermatologist, and my research straddles the disciplines of genomics, immunology, skin, and human development. I want to make a difference to human health, focusing on understanding how the human body is built, what goes wrong in disease, and how we can prevent it or treat disease.
How did you get involved with Open Targets, and what is your project about?
When I joined the Wellcome Sanger Institute as a Senior Group Leader, I saw this amazing opportunity for joint working between research organisations, academic organisations, and industry partners in a pre-competitive space.
It was the perfect opportunity to pitch my project. Led by Professor Catherine Smith at King’s College London, Beacon is a UK-wide, randomised controlled trial of 402 patients with eczema or atopic dermatitis, two of the most common skin diseases. One of the challenges in treating skin diseases is that treatments are prescribed through trial-and-error, and so patients often cycle through multiple treatments before finding one that is effective. Beacon is the first trial to comprehensively compare the effectiveness, tolerability, and cost-effectiveness of three eczema treatments.
In this study we have an opportunity to gather more information at the molecular and cellular levels, using genomics technologies to understand how patients respond to treatment. This could help identify which patients are most likely to respond to specific treatments to make treatments much more precise. It will also lead us to understand why there is no cure for atopic dermatitis.
You are now three years into the project. How have you found it so far?
It’s been fantastic. We’ve been working with our clinical partners to get the material, generate and analyse the data. All the components of Open Targets—the external partners, the Sanger genomics facilities, the computational elements of the project, and the industry partners—contribute to making it a great working environment. The best research occurs when partnerships are equal, and a great collaborative team-working spirit exists, as seen in Open Targets.
This is a model that I feel very lucky to have been part of, and I think it’s hugely successful. I have to give a lot of credit to the people who are behind it, in terms of setting it up and making it into a successful, roaring consortium.
markthomsonsanger
