People: Personalised Medicine Research

Professor Tony Bjourson obtained an MSc in Molecular Biosciences from Ulster University and a PhD (Cell signalling) from Queen’s University Belfast (1996).

He established and managed various genome programmes at DARDNI and Queens University Belfast, including participating in the EU Yeast Genome sequencing program (1994-1996).

After joining Ulster University in 2001 he led the Pharmaceutical Biotechnology (2003-2005) and Biomedical Genomics Research Groups (2005-2007).

He co-founded and was Director of the Clinical Translation Research & Innovation Centre (C-TRIC) based in L/Derry (2008-2021).

He was appointed Director of Ulster University’s Biomedical Sciences Research Institute (2007-2015), and Director of the Northern Ireland Centre for Stratified Medicine (2013-2021) which he established at Altnagelvin Hospital (C-TRIC) with an £11.5M award.

He led a mult-national multisector €8.6M EU SEUPB Centre for Personalised Medicine Patient Safety and Clinical Decision Making from 2018-2021 and was co-applicant on the MRC funded Northern Ireland Genomic Medicine Centre.

He served as Director of the Ulster’s venture company Innovation Ulster Ltd (2007-2011), Steering Committee member of the Northern Ireland Biobank, and Council Member of the Irish Society for Human Genetics.

He has secured > £28M in personalised medicine research grants and supervised >25 PhD students.

Professor Aaron Peace

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Professor Aaron Peace

Professor Peace is a practicing Cardiologist, Director of Research and Development at the Western Health and Social Care Trust, and visiting Professor to the Ulster University Personalised Medicine Centre. After training in Queen’s University, Belfast he worked in Royal Northshore Hospital, Sydney and then Dublin, where he completed his Cardiology training.

During this he was awarded a Health Research Board Clinical Fellowship completing his PhD in Platelet biology. Following subspecialty training in Interventional Cardiology in the Cardiovascular Centre, OLV, Aalst, Belgium, he moved back to Northern Ireland.

Prof. Peace is a member of the HSC NI Digital Innovation Steering Group, the Northern Ireland Trusted Research Environment (NITRE) Steering Committee and Deputy Chair of the Honest Broker Governance Committee. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the European Heart Journal - Digital Health and the European Association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions (EAPCI) - Innovations and Digital Cardiology Committee. He has around 100 peer reviewed publications and reviews for many international peer review journals.

He is a Fellow of both the Royal College of Physicians and European Society of Cardiology. Prof. Peace is the CEO of C-TRIC, a non-for-profit company that facilitates research for industry and academic investigators. His special interests include Artificial Intelligence, and Digital Healthcare.

Professor Irene Rea

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Professor Irene Rea

Professor Irene Maeve Rea combines her research and teaching interest in healthy ageing and inflammation with her work as a clinical consultant for the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust in Older People’s Medicine, in ongoing research and teaching collaborations with colleagues from her previous role in clinical medical academic research at Queens University Belfast and with colleagues in the University of Ulster in hervisiting professorship at Northern Ireland Centre for Stratified Medicine, C_TRIC. The main focus of Professor Rea’s research is investigating factors that may explain why approximately 10% of 90-year-olds age slowly, combining long ‘lifespan’ with ‘health span’ and often cluster in families.

In my research collaborations at Queens University Belfast, I set up the Belfast Elderly Longitudinal Study (BELFAST), (Wellcome Trust funded), that continues to investigate immunological, cardiovascular risk, genetic and life-style measures that may have contributed to good quality ageing in BELFAST nonagenarians. In a follow-on 11-country, EU-funded collaboration, Genetics of Healthy Ageing (GEHA study), the genetic and lifestyle data collected from 4500 nonagenarian, sibling pairs confirmed the APOE2 gene, and identified a chromosome-5-gene, and the mitochondrial-111-oxidation/redox gene complex, as new gene-related factors contributing to longevity. In non-genetic studies, GEHA researchers, and colleagues from Queens University and University of Ulster (C_TRIC) are part of a world-wide group which is investigating the role that chronic inflammation plays in the development of the chronic diseases, that compromise good quality ageing. A narrative review has also demonstrated the importance of optimism, resilience and good social networks in healthy ageing in GEHA nonagenarians.

Dr Irene Maeve Rea graduated in medicine at Queens University Belfast and during postgraduate clinical medical training obtained a visiting research scholarship to study at the Immunology, Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics laboratory at Stanford Medical School, following which she obtained MD in Neutrophil Function in Ageing. Professor Rea has lectured widely as an invited research speaker nationally and internationally and has contributed to undergraduate Medical training programmes at Harvard and in Taiwan. She continues to publish and peer review in wide range of age-related journals.

Professor Pierre-François Pradat

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Professor Pierre-François Pradat

Professor Pierre-François Pradat, MD, PhD, an expert in neuromuscular diseases and especially motor neuron diseases (MNDs), obtained his medical degree and his PhD at the Sorbonne University (Paris, France). After his thesis in animal models of peripheral neuropathies and MNDs, he moved to the USA for a post-doctoral position at the Harvard Medical School in R.H.Jr Brown’s laboratory where he conducted research on drug screening in in vitro models of ALS. He then returned to Paris in the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital (Sorbonne University) where he has been practicing neurology for more than 15 years with special expertise in MNDs

He is also Visiting Professor within the Faculty of Life and Health Sciences (Ulster University, UK). Dr Pradat’s research interests have focused on translational and clinical research in neuromuscular diseases. His research contributed to better understanding of the role of muscular abnormalities in ALS pathogenesis and to identify new biomarkers and therapeutic targets. His other expertise is neuroimaging and more specifically the application of advanced spinal cord imaging in MNDs.

The research that he and his colleagues conducted has been published in Annals of Neurology, Neurology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Brain, Human Gene Therapy, Gene Therapy, Neuroimage and elsewhere. By October 2022 he (co)authored 204 peer-reviewed papers in international journals.

People: Personalised Medicine Research

Our Team

Dr William Duddy

Dr Stephanie Duguez

Dr David Gibson

Dr Catriona Kelly

Dr Kyle Matchett

Dr Paula McClean

Dr Victoria McGilligan

Dr Elaine Murray

Tonina Sechi

Dr Priyank Shukla

Dr Taranjit Singh Rai

Dr Steven Watterson

Dr Shu-Dong Zhang

Visiting Professors

Professor Tony Bjourson

Professor Aaron Peace

Professor Irene Rea

Professor Pierre-François Pradat

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