Associate Professor Georgios Baskozos is part of the Neural Injury Group. We spoke to him ahead of his Departmental Seminar.
Tell us a little about yourself, and what attracted you to working at the University of Oxford?
I studied computer science, but I always had a soft spot for biology and life sciences. I also preferred scientific programming, statistics and data analysis to hardcore low-level coding, and I wanted to use my skills somewhere that matters. Bioinformatics sounded a really nice combination that is close to what I first studied, but also presented an opportunity to learn new things. I met David Bennett during my PhD, came to Oxford for a post-doc in 2017 and here I am.
How did you get to where you are today? Can you tell us more about your career path?
I studied computer science in Greece and came to London for an MSc in bioinformatics at King's College London. I loved it and as I always wanted to stay in the university (and not work in the private sector) I also found out that I can secure full studentships for a PhD. I obtained a Welcome Trust studentship for a 4-year PhD at University College London, within the London Pain Consortium. There, I embarked on the development of analytical workflows and generally in the early adoption of Next Generation Sequencing in pain research. My focus was on the identification and characterisation of novel long non-coding RNAs. I worked with C. Orengo and D. Bennett within the LPC, and after my PhD, I applied for a post-doc at NDCN in David Bennett's lab.
Can you give us a brief overview of your research?
My research focus is on the bioinformatics of neuropathic pain, including transcriptomics, genomics, statistical learning and predictive modelling, in order to understand the complex interplay of pathophysiological factors that drive neuropathic pain.
What is the aim/vision for your research?
I am trying to understand why some people develop painful neuropathies while others don't. Towards this, my aim is to identify novel molecular mediators of neuropathic pain, novel risk variants on genes and also to understand how clinical, demographical, psychological and biochemical features contribute to the development of painful or painless neuropathies.
What can we expect from your Departmental Seminar?
I will present a series of studies that utilise multiple -omics, to characterise the molecular signature of neuropathic pain in highly phenotyped cohorts. In particular, I will discuss how the integration of multiple omics assays of the same blood samples from over 400 individuals with Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy can reveal composite signatures associated with the presence of Neuropathic Pain and partially explain the heterogeneity of the disease.
What key question are you trying to answer in your Departmental Seminar?
Are there any composite markers based on the molecular changes at the level of genetic variation; the gene protein expression; the quantity of metabolites and biomarkers in blood that can help us to understand why some people develop painful neuropathies?