Prof Psych Genetics (he/him) @KingsIoPPN NIHR MH BioResource. PI @edgi_uk, @GLADStudy, @covidcns. Gratitude: my wonderful TNG, Biobank groups @SGDPcentreKCL
King's College London
Joined May 2009
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GLAD is now >30,000 volunteers. Thanks to all of our participants, supporters, and all the researchers who have helped with recruitment in >200 clinical sites! If you have ever experienced depression or anxiety. @GLADStudy @NIHRBioResource @NIHRMaudsleyBRC
We would like to say a huge thank you to all of our participants who have taken the time to participate in the #GLADStudy and return their saliva kits!
If you haven’t taken part yet and would like to you, you can sign up for the #GLAD Study at gladstudy.co.uk
Kathy Stirrups presenting on @NIHRBioResource Long Read Sequencing including 22K participants - including 4K from @edgi_uk #ashg2026 - first data freeze available in Dec with more available via a Lifebit TRE early next year. Sequenced with @nanopore at @KCLGenomics and Cambridge.
Gerome Breen retweeted
I understand that people are demanding more access to products and control over their health, but unregulated peptides and “research use only” products are not worth it. There is a time and place to push boundaries but injecting yourself with something that is not proven or of an unknown source is not worth the risks.
Two souls are dead because they self administered something purporting to be the most powerful metabolic agent ever developed - without medical supervision, before the inventor has asked for approval and sourced from a Chinese “lab” seeking to make a quick buck.
Peptide World - “Lilly made this up”.
Gerome Breen retweeted
Fewer than 1 in 15 young people with a mental health disorder based in South London received a diagnosis from NHS mental health services from 2009-2024, compared to the general population, in new research published in @LancetRH_Europe
kcl.ac.uk/news/fewer-than-1-…
📄 New preprint from ENCAP, the European Network for Clinical Application in Psychiatric Genomics: Recalculated CNV penetrance: what it does and does not change for counselling 🔗 doi.org/10.64898/2026.10.06.… 🧵 1/6
👨👩👧 Our view → give families phenotype-specific absolute risks alongside background risks, and leave reporting decisions to guideline bodies, locus by locus, across all relevant phenotypes. 5/6
Gerome Breen retweeted
Every day I vacillate between which AI model I like more for science and which AI company's psychotic leaders & cults I hate more.
Gerome Breen retweeted
Exclusive: Nigel Farage filmed undercover celebrating secret new foreign donations
Undercover footage verified by Channel 4 News reveals a secret plot by senior Reform UK figures to break the law on party donations. A leading legal expert is now calling for a criminal investigation.
🔗 Read the exclusive story on Substack:
channel4news.substack.com/p/…
Gerome Breen retweeted
And…have difficulty being published. Our DREADD paper was rejected without review at multiple “high impact” journals …
Gerome Breen retweeted
New research published in @NatMentHealth and led by @KingsIoPPN + @PGCgenetics is the largest genetic study of anorexia nervosa to date, and the first to compare the genetics of people with binge-eating behaviours to those without an eating disorder.
maudsleybrc.nihr.ac.uk/news/…
ALT Major international study marks step forward in genetic understanding of eating disorders
ALT “This work is really important - we go beyond anorexia nervosa and start to understand the genetics of binge eating, which affects many people with eating disorders. We're hopeful that our findings will allow future research to improve the lives of people with all eating disorders.” Dr Jonathan Coleman Senior Lecturer in Statistical Genetics, King’s IoPPN
Gerome Breen retweeted
It was basically too many risk points (vector, cargo,drug,indication,delivery,ROI) but I did not pursue this. It was mainly discussions with folks who wanted to commercialize it. Given that the basic platform is now being de-risked, anyone with a smidgen of imagination could go forward.
Gerome Breen retweeted
Spain's mistake over Ceuta was merely unpreparedness. Europe's much bigger mistake was attacking a Member State under an external (and likely coordinated) aggression just to score some meaningless political points at home instead of rallying around it and defend European borders.
Gerome Breen retweeted
What just happened in Ceuta was an orchestrated power move against Spain using migrants as a weapon. Young, unemployed Moroccan men lured by social media groups with promises of a new life and literally bussed to the border and ushed across by Moroccan authorities, were met only by an array of cameras awaiting them. Almost all returned home the next day. We are in a new era of warfare where the new weapons of geopolitical power-plays are ai, disinformation, deepfakes, troll farms and the poor - and Spain just got sent a message.
All the world is a stage.
Gerome Breen retweeted
Another question I'd have about the AI math breakthroughs is how they compare to the results you would have gotten if you'd budgeted the same amount of resources on human mathematicians and created incentives for them to go super hard on proofs.
Gerome Breen retweeted
A major challenge in genetics is interpreting missense variants. Unlike PTVs, they can be benign or damaging. Excited to share our work, led by Hilary Finucane and Emily Nason, where we tackle this. Below is a Manhattan plot of missense clustering in protein structure in ClinVar
Now Jayne Wallace on protein sequencing - there are >1 million different proteins and they can be sequenced, along with their mdoifications. Two approaches: digested peptide and whole protein - the former will be talked about today. #Nanoporeconf
Uses a strat with DNA adapters on either end of a peptide - the same customised pore does both DNA and protein (allows barcoding). Now have sequenced 150K - moving from classifiers to amino calling. #Nanoporeconf
Used their amino caller with 22 E coli proteins, digested and sequenced them. Also have done protein barcoding - 1000 protein barcodes to train and tested 3 pools of 1000 barcoded proteins and it works. Shows how it can also resolve phosphorylation. #Nanoporeconf