Pankaj Sharma (Genetics PhD 1994) has received an OBE in the King鈥檚 Birthday Honours for services to Research in Strokes in South Asian People.
Pankaj is a consultant neurologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Professor of Neurology at the Royal Holloway College, University of London, where he is also director of the Institute of Cardiovascular Research. His primary interest is in identifying causal genes for stroke, particularly in people of South Asian heritage.
鈥淢ost neurologists are interested in the very rare conditions, but stroke is the most common along with dementia,鈥 says Pankaj. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 why I decided to undertake stroke research.
鈥淚鈥檓 a geneticist with an interest in large populations. When I was at Cambridge, I worked under Professor Morris Brown, who was a Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at the time. He was interested in finding genes for high blood pressure and had a large cohort of white patients from around the Cambridgeshire area.
鈥淲hen I left Cambridge and set up myself, I was going to go into a similar area of work in high blood pressure in white patients but realised that lots of people were already in that field. Although a large burden on the healthcare service was from cardiovascular disease, stroke in the South Asian population was hardly being studied. Indeed, when South Asians did have a stroke it tended to be more severe.
鈥淭he reason for that is likely that they present a lot later, so when they do present with stroke it鈥檚 often more severe because their comorbidities have not been treated earlier. I knew we needed to understand why they present later and what the genes are that potentially put them at higher risk 鈥 and no one else was doing that in South Asians.鈥
Pankaj and his team have worked for around 20 years to build an international biobank for South Asian stroke patients, known as BRAINS (BioRepository of DNA in Stroke), to further understanding of the causes and consequences of stroke for these patients. To date, BRAINS has collected around 6,000 cases, an outstanding achievement for which Pankaj has been awarded his OBE.
Pankaj says: 鈥淚t is a privilege to be recognised for the quiet but dedicated work that my group and I have been undertaking for so many years in understanding and trying to improve the health of British South Asians.
鈥淏RAINS, likely the world鈥檚 largest biobank for South Asian stroke, involved recruiting patients from throughout the UK as well as India, Sri Lanka and the Middle East. My greatest thanks go to all those patients without whom this work would not have been possible.
鈥淭he work is really just in its beginnings in terms of analyses. BRAINS is expected to continue to generate very important results for years to come."
