Interview: Julie Williams speaks to Personalized Medicine

Julie Williams is a Professor at the Department of Psychological Medicine and Neurology at Cardiff University School of Medicine, Wales, UK. She is currently part of the Medical Research Council Center on Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics where she heads the Neurodegeneration Section. Her research focuses on identifying and understanding genes that increase the risk of developing complex psychological and neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, developmental dyslexia and schizophrenia. In 2009, Professor Williams published evidence from a powerful genome-wide study for the first new susceptibility genes for Alzheimer’s disease in 17 years. Along with results from a second genome-wide association study, these findings were highlighted by Time Magazine as one of the ten most important medical breakthroughs of 2009. Recently, Professor Williams led a group that discovered five gene variants that raise the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, bringing the known number of genes associated with the disease to ten. With genes known to account for 20% of a person’s chance of developing late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, the cost in long-term care and lost productivity reaching £23 billion (according to a dementia report commissioned last year by the Alzheimer’s Research Trust), understanding the genes responsible for the steady and irreversible destruction of brain cells leading to the disease is crucial.