Dr Emma Magavern

Dr Emma Magavern

Name:

Dr Emma Magavern

Organisation:

Queen Mary, University of London

Year elected:

2024

Primary professional setting:

Clinical

Medicines do not work well or have side effects for many people. Some of the reason for this variability in medication response is due to common variants in DNA. Large scale research on populations has shown that all of us will have at least one variant in our DNA that would change the approach to medicines use if we needed a specific medicine. Therefore, if we know who has these DNA variants, we can prescribe medicine in a more personalised way avoiding a trial-and-error approach. This can make medicines safer by reducing bad reactions to medications and improving how medicines work for people. My work is focused on understanding more about how and why people with different variants in DNA respond differently to medications. A key focus is on leveraging genomic tools to target existing health inequalities. For this field of work to benefit patients the public need to know about this topic and tell the health care teams how we should use this in clinical settings in the NHS. Therefore, my work is also focused on communicating with patients and the public about this area of science, curating patient and prescriber information resources, and surveying patient attitudes and concerns.