Katie is a Lecturer in Epigenetics at the University of Exeter Medical School, with a particular interest in dementia. Katie graduated with a BSc Honours degree in Biochemistry & Pharmacology (1st Class) from the University of Southampton in 2004. It was during this Batchelor’s degree that Katie became fascinated by dementia, which naturally led on to her PhD studies in the CNS Inflammation Group at the University of Southampton under the supervision of Professor Hugh Perry. During her PhD she investigated the effect that systemic inflammation has on the brain, particularly in dementia.
In 2008 Katie started a post-doctoral research position in the Department of Old Age Psychiatry in King’s College London. In this role she identified peripheral changes that occur in the blood of people with Alzheimer’s disease. Subsequently in 2012 Katie moved to the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry (SGDP) Centre also within King’s College London to work in the Psychiatric Epigenetics Group. Here she combined techniques she had previously acquired, with cutting-edge methylomics technology to investigate the role of DNA methylation in late-onset Alzheimer’s disease aetiology. This work represented the first high-throughput, genome-wide, cross-tissue methylomic study in Alzheimer’s disease.
Katie was appointed as a Lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School, in June 2013. Here the focus of her research surrounds investigating epigenetic mechanisms in dementia.
Condliffe D, Wong A, Troakes C, Proitsi P, Patel Y, Chouliaras L, Fernandes C, Cooper J, Lovestone S, Schalkwyk LC, Mill J, Lunnon K. (2014) Cross-region reduction in 5-hydroxymethylcytosine in Alzheimer’s disease brain. Neurobiology of Aging [In press]
Proitsi P, Lee SH, Lunnon K, Keohane A, Troakes C, Al-Sarraj S, Furney S, Soininen H, Kloszewska I, Mecocci P, Tsolaki M, Vellas B, Lovestone S, Hodges A. (2014) Alzheimer’s disease susceptibility variants in the MS4A6A gene are associated with altered levels of MS4A6A expression in blood. Neurobiology of Aging. Feb;35(2):279-90.
Killick R, Ribe EM, Al-Shawi R, Malik B, Hooper C, Fernandes C, Dobson R, Nolan PM, Lourdusamy A, Furney S, Lin K, Breen G, Wroe R, To A, Leroy K, Causevic M, Usardi A, Robinson M, Noble W, Williamson R, Lunnon K, Kellie S, Reynolds CH, Bazenet C, Hodges A, Brion JP, Stephenson J,Simons JP, Lovestone S. (2014) Clusterin regulates Beta-amyloid toxicity via Dickkopf-1-driven induction of the wnt-PCP-JNK pathway. Mol Psychiatry. Jan;19(1):88-98.
Lunnon K, Mill J. (2013) Epigenetic studies in Alzheimer’s disease: current findings, caveats and considerations for future studies. Am. J. Med. Genet. B Neuropsychiatr Sep 13. [Epub ahead of print]
Leung R, Proitsi P, Simmons A, Lunnon K, Güntert A, Kronenberg D, Pritchard M, Tsolak M, Mecocci P, Kloszewska I, Vellas B, Soininen H, Wahlund L-O, Lovestone S. (2013) Inflammatory proteins in plasma are associated with severity of Alzheimer’s disease. PLoS One. Jun 10;8(6):e64971
Pidsley R, Wong CCY, Volta M, Lunnon K, Mill J, Schalkwyk L. (2013) A data-driven approach to preprocessing Illumina 450K methylation array data. BMC Genomics. May 1;14:293
Lunnon K, Sattlecker S, Furney SJ, Coppola G, Simmons A, Proitsi P, Lupton M, Lourdusamy A, Soininen H, Kloszewska I, Mecocci P, Tsolaki M, Vellas B, Geschwind D, Lovestone S, Dobson R, Hodges A. (2013) A blood gene expression marker of early Alzheimer’s disease. J Alzheimer’s Dis 33 (3):737-53
Kiddle SJ, Thambisetty M, Riddoch-Contreras J, Hye A, Simmons A, Westman E, Pike I, Ward M, Johnston C, Lupton M, Lunnon K, Soininen H, Kloszewska I, Tsolaki M, Vellas B,, Mecocci P, Lovestone S, Newhouse S, Dobson R (2012) Plasma based markers of [11C]-PiB PET brain amyloid burden. PLoSOne 7(9):e44260.
Davies MN, Volta M, Pidsley R, Lunnon K, Dixit A, Lovestone S, Coarfa C, Harris RA, Milosavljevic A, Troakes C, Al-Sarraj S, Dobson R, Schalkwyk LC, Mill J. (2012) Functional annotation of the human brain methylome identifies tissue-specific epigenetic variation across brain and blood. Genome Biol 13 (6): R43.
Lunnon K, Ibrahim Z, Proitsi P, Lourdusamy A, Newhouse S, Sattlecker M, Furney SJ, Saleem M, Soininen H, Kloszewska I, Mecocci P, Tsolaki M, Vellas V, Coppola G, Geschwind D, Lovestone S, Dobson R, Hodges A. (2012) Mitochondrial dysfunction and immune activation are detectable in early Alzheimer’s disease blood. J Alzheimer’s Dis 30 (3): 685-710.
Lourdusamy A, Newhouse S, Lunnon K, Proitsi P, Powell J, Hodges A, Nelson SK, Stewart A, Williams S, Kloszewska I, Mecocci P, Soininen H, Tsolaki M, Vellas B, Lovestone S, Dobson R. (2012) Identification of cis-regulatory variation influencing protein abundance levels in human plasma. Hum Mol Genet 21 (16): 3719-3726.
Lunnon K, Teeling JL, Tutt AL Cragg MS, Glennie MJ and Perry VH. (2011) Systemic inflammation modulates Fc receptor expression on microglia during chronic neurodegeneration. J Immunol 186(12):7215-24.
Furney SJ, Simmons A, Breen G, Pedroso I, Lunnon K, Proitsi P, Hodges A, Powell J, Wahlund LO, Kloszewska I, Mecocci P, Soininen H, Tsolaki M, Vellas B, Spenger C, Lathrop M, Shen L, Kim S, Saykin AJ, Weiner MW, Lovestone S. (2011) Genome-wide association with MRI atrophy measures as a quantitative trait locus for Alzheimer’s disease. Mol Psychiatry. Nov;16(11):1130-8.
Thambisetty M, Simmons A, Velayudhan L, Hye A, Campbell J, Zhang Y, Wahlund LO, Westman E, Kinsey A, Güntert A, Proitsi P, Powell J, Causevic M, Killick R, Lunnon K, Lynham S, Broadstock M, Choudhry F, Howlett DR, Williams RJ, Sharp SI, Mitchelmore C, Tunnard C, Leung R, Foy C, O'Brien D, Breen G, Furney SJ, Ward M, Kloszewska I, Mecocci P, Soininen H, Tsolaki M, Vellas B, Hodges A, Murphy DG, Parkins S, Richardson JC, Resnick SM, Ferrucci L, Wong DF, Zhou Y, Muehlboeck S, Evans A, Francis PT, Spenger C, Lovestone S. (2010) Association of plasma clusterin concentration with severity, pathology, and progression in Alzheimer disease. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 67(7):739-48.
Asuni AA, Hilton K, Siskova Z, Lunnon K, Reynolds R, Perry VH, O'Connor V. (2010) Alpha-synuclein deficiency in the C57BL/6JOlaHsd strain does not modify disease progression in the ME7-model of prion disease. Neuroscience. 165(3):662-74.
Cunningham C, Campion S, Lunnon K, Murray CL, Woods JF, Deacon RM, Rawlins JN, Perry VH. (2009) Systemic inflammation induces acute behavioral and cognitive changes and accelerates neurodegenerative disease. Biol Psychiatry. 65(4):304-12.
Cunningham C, Wilcockson DC, Campion S, Lunnon K, Perry VH. (2005) Central and systemic endotoxin challenges exacerbate the local inflammatory response and increase neuronal death during chronic neurodegeneration. J Neurosci. 2005 25(40):9275-84.
