Early Origins of Health and Disease

Research Group Leader: Professor Julie Owens

The Early Origins of Health and Disease group focuses on those aspects of health that are profoundly influenced by events in early life and possibly in previous generations, including diabetes, obesity and cancer risk.

The group aims to understand how common exposures in early life affect our later health and the mechanisms involved (including how these early life exposures interact with the genome and affect the epigenome to determine our later health), and to identify interventions to either prevent the conditions that initiate programming of our later health or to overcome or reverse such programming.

Research Priorities:

• Early life programming of diabetes and obesity-fetal growth restriction, maternal obesity
• Functional and epigenetic consequences of maternal micro and macronutrient deficiencies for metabolic function and cancer risk of offspring
• Micronutrient, dietary and other interventions in mother and offspring to overcome placental programming of metabolic disease
• Efficacy of micronutrient and other interventions in mother and offspring and their molecular and epigenetic basis.