Mark McCarthy - Principal Fellow and Executive Director, Human Genetics, Research Biology

Mark McCarthy

Principal Fellow and Executive Director, Human Genetics, Research Biology

Postdoc Mentor
Fellow
"I am excited about the opportunities that human genetics offers to better understand the biology of disease, and guide us to improved approaches to treatment and prevention."
5
Years at Genentech
115
Publications at Genentech
6
Awards & Honors

I trained as an endocrinologist in Cambridge (UK) and London, and came late to research, combining the final years of my medical training with a foray into diabetes genetics under Graham Hitman and Newton Morton. A year spent in Boston with Eric Lander in the mid 90s was transformative. On my return to the UK, I took up a joint clinical and research post at Imperial College, London, and built a team working on the genetics of type 2 diabetes. I moved to Oxford as Robert Turner Professor of Diabetic Medicine in 2002, and stayed there till my move to take up the position of Senior Director in Human Genetics at Genentech in June 2019.

Postdoctoral Mentor

One of the key strengths of Genentech is the value placed on curiosity-driven research and scientific excellence to drive innovation in drug development. The postdoc program at Genentech is an embodiment of that ideal. I have been fortunate to mentor many fantastic postdocs during my time in Oxford, and look forward to continuing in that role, using the opportunity that the postdoc program at Genentech affords to conduct ambitious, cutting-edge research and to realize the career aspirations of the next wave of researchers.

Featured Publication

Fine-mapping type 2 diabetes loci to single-variant resolution using high-density imputation and islet-specific epigenome maps.

Nat Genet. 2018 Nov;50(11):1505-1513.

Mahajan A, Taliun D, Thurner M, Robertson NR, Torres JM, Rayner NW, Payne AJ, Steinthorsdottir V, Scott RA, Grarup N, Cook JP, Schmidt EM, Wuttke M, Sarnowski C, Mägi R, Nano J, Gieger C, Trompet S, Lecoeur C, Preuss MH, Prins BP, Guo X, Bielak LF, Below JE, Bowden DW, Chambers JC, Kim YJ, Ng MCY, Petty LE, Sim X, Zhang W, Bennett AJ, Bork-Jensen J, Brummett CM, Canouil M, Ec Kardt KU, Fischer K, Kardia SLR, Kronenberg F, Läll K, Liu CT, Locke AE, Luan J, Ntalla I, Nylander V, Schönherr S, Schurmann C, Yengo L, Bottinger EP, Brandslund I, Christensen C, Dedoussis G, Florez JC, Ford I, Franco OH, Frayling TM, Giedraitis V, Hackinger S, Hattersley AT, Herder C, Ikram MA, Ingelsson M, Jørgensen ME, Jørgensen T, Kriebel J, Kuusisto J, Ligthart S, Lindgren CM, Linneberg A, Lyssenko V, Mamakou V, Meitinger T, Mohlke KL, Morris AD, Nadkarni G, Pankow JS, Peters A, Sattar N, Stančáková A, Strauch K, Taylor KD, Thorand B, Thorleifsson G, Thorsteinsdottir U, Tuomilehto J, Witte DR, Dupuis J, Peyser PA, Zeggini E, Loos RJF, Froguel P, Ingelsson E, Lind L, Groop L, Laakso M, Collins FS, Jukema JW, Palmer CNA, Grallert H, Metspalu A, Dehghan A, Köttgen A, Abecasis GR, Meigs JB, Rotter JI, Marchini J, Pedersen O, Hansen T, Langenberg C, Wareham NJ, Stefansson K, Gloyn AL, Morris AP, Boehnke M, McCarthy MI.