Laura Winchester

RESEARCH SUMMARY:

My main research focus is on using genomic and proteomic data analysis from Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and healthy population cohorts to develop new biomarkers and understand disease mechanisms by applying integrative and machine learning methodologies. 

I lead research on projects studying proteomics in Parkinson's disease, aiming to gain deeper insights into the disease's pathophysiology and progression. By analysing protein expression patterns, we strive to develop strategies for stratifying patients based on their unique disease characteristics and mechanisms. I am also interested in the relationship between iron homeostasis and dementia. This involves the application of large-scale multi-omics data to develop new biomarkers and understand disease mechanisms.  

BIOGRAPHY:

I am an Alzheimer’s Research UK Senior Research Fellow. I am leading the bioinformatics team working on the analysis of multiple data types including proteomic, genomics and epidemiology in patient cohorts, biobanks, experimentally derived and real-world data. I hope to use these methods to better understand disease variants and therapeutics in age-related diseases.

I have worked in the Department of Psychiatry for nine years and have recently become the Athena Swan representative for the department. I am also the Internal Examiner for the Clinical and Therapeutic Neuroscience Masters. I am based in an informatics and AI team working on dementia and neurodegenerative disease in the Translational Neuroscience and Dementia Research Group.