Professor Anneke Lucassen BMedSci, MBBS, DPhil(Oxon), FRCP

Professor of Clinical Genetics, Honorary Consultant in Clinical Genetics, Wessex Clinical Genetics Service,Clinical Ethics and Law Unit, Faculty of Medicine

Anneke Lucassen is Professor of Clinical Genetics within Medicine at the University of Southampton and combines key clinical, laboratory and ethico-legal expertise to research developments in genetic medicine and to effect improved delivery of genomic services to individuals and families.

What has fascinated me over the last 20 years is combining very different skill sets to approach genomic developments in an interdisciplinary way. The bottleneck for genomic medicine has shifted from cost/ technology limitations to interpretation, and there is much to think about.

Anneke did her higher medical training in Oxford before doing a PhD in the molecular genetics of multifactorial disease at the Institute of Molecular Medicine (Oxford). She specialised in Clinical Genetics, was appointed to Consultant in Oxford in 1997 and became Professor of Clinical Genetics in Southampton in 2007. She has integrated her molecular research experience (PhD in the molecular genetics of multifactorial disease, Oxford) and 20+ years of busy clinical practice, to examine the problems of translating an exponentially increasing amount of detailed molecular genetic information to useful clinical information.  Her particular interest is the ethico-legal aspects raised by new genomic technologies. In 2001 she co-founded the UK Genethics Group (www.genethicsUK.org) which is a national forum for the analysis of ethico-legal issues arising in genetic practice, which has held nearly 50 national meetings to date. She co-leads the Clinical Ethics and Law unit in the Faculty of Medicine, Southampton (CELS: www.soton.ac.uk )

Her leadership role in national policy development and implementation of best practice is evidenced by appointment to the Human Genetics Commission until 2012; Nuffield Council of Bioethics 2009-2015; Member of HFEA scientific review of treatment of mitochondrial diseases 2011-2014 and Genomics England Ethics Advisory committee 2013 onwards. She was the inaugural chair of the British Society for Genetic Medicine Ethics and Policy committee, and plays a key role in the development, and running of, the Wessex Genome Medicine Centre.

In 2013 she was awarded a prestigious visiting professorship to Groningen University, the Netherlands (-2017). The legacy of this is a rolling programme of 4 year joint PhDships between the two universities.

In 2017 she was awarded a £1.2 million collaborative research grant from the Wellcome Trust together with Prof Bobbie Farsides at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. This will fund a 5 year programme of research entitled “Facilitating ethical preparedness in genomic medicine” which aims to develop and deliver empirical and conceptual bioethics research as genomic medicine becomes an integral part of healthcare. 

From 2017 she is Chair of the British Society for Genetic Medicine.