Visiting Scientist
Early Life Aetiology and Mechanisms of Diabetes and Related Metabolic Disorders
Current work and interests
Hana Lango Allen studies the contribution of both common and rare genetic variation to human traits and disease. Her focus is on the application of high-throughput sequence data to discoveries of genetic aetiologies behind complex phenotypes such as reproductive timing, obesity, type 2 diabetes and related metabolic disorders. Investigations of rare and structural genomic changes in the field of complex human traits has only recently become possible owing to the continuing efforts to sequence the genomes of large biobanks of deeply phenotyped individuals from the general population.
Background and experience
Hana has an MSc in Bioinformatics (University of Leicester, 2005) and a PhD in “The role of common genetic variation in model polygenic and monogenic traits” (University of Exeter, 2010).
Hana’s early postdoc career was in the University of Exeter, where she contributed to discoveries of genetic loci associated with polygenic traits such as height, BMI, and type 2 diabetes. She then switched to studying monogenic disorders, which involved designing analytical pipelines to take advantage of new high-throughput sequencing technologies. She identified novel causes of rare diseases such as neonatal diabetes, pancreatic agenesis, skeletal malformations, multi-system disorders, lethal fetal malformation syndromes, and others.
Hana moved to Cambridge in 2015 to take on the role of the Chief Analyst for the Primary Immunodeficiency domain of the NIHR BioResource – Rare Diseases whole genome sequencing project. She discovered new genes for inherited disorders of the immune system, and demonstrated both polygenic and monogenic aetiologies in this rare disease that has strong environmental (pathogen exposure) component.
Publications
- Full publications list available on Google scholar
- MRC Epidemiology Unit publications on Publications Database
Selected Publications
- Thaventhiran JED, Lango Allen H Burren OS et al. Whole Genome Sequencing of Primary Immunodeficiency reveals a role for common and rare variants in coding and non-coding sequences. (2019) In revision, pre-print available on bioRxiv.
- The NIHR BioResource, on behalf of the 100,000 Genomes Project. Whole-genome sequencing of rare disease patients in a national healthcare system. (2019) In revision, pre-print available on bioRxiv.
- Tuijnenburg P, Lango Allen H et al. Loss-of-function nuclear factor κB subunit 1 (NFKB1) variants are the most common monogenic cause of common variable immunodeficiency in Europeans. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (2018) 142:1285
- Ellard S, […] , and Lango Allen H. An exome sequencing strategy to diagnose lethal autosomal recessive disorders. European Journal of Human Genetics (2015) 23:401
- Lango Allen H et al. Next generation sequencing of chromosomal rearrangements in patients with split-hand/split-foot malformation provides evidence for DYNC1I1 exonic enhancers of DLX5/6 expression in humans. Journal of Medical Genetics (2014) 51:264
- Ellard S, Lango Allen H et al. Improved genetic testing for monogenic diabetes using targeted next-generation sequencing. Diabetologia (2013) 56:1958
- Lango Allen H et al. GATA6 haploinsufficiency causes pancreatic agenesis in humans. Nature Genetics (2012) 44:20
- Lango Allen H et al. Hundreds of variants clustered in genomic loci and biological pathways affect human height. Nature (2010) 467:832
- Lango Allen H et al. Polygenic risk variants for type 2 diabetes susceptibility modify age at diagnosis in monogenic HNF1A diabetes. Diabetes (2010) 59:266
- Lango H et al. Assessing the combined impact of 18 common genetic variants of modest effect sizes on type 2 diabetes risk. Diabetes (2008) 57:3129
- Weedon MN, Lango H et al. Genome-wide association analysis identifies 20 loci that influence adult height. Nature Genetics (2008) 40:575
- Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium Genome-wide association study of 14,000 cases of seven common diseases and 3,000 shared controls. Nature (2007) 447:661