ProfessorWilliam Cookson, MA, MD, DPhil, FRCP, FMedSci

William Cookson is Professor of Genomic Medicine at Imperial College London. He trained as a respiratory physician and an epidemiologist, before receiving a D.Phil. in human genetics at Oxford in 1994. He was a Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford between 1998 and 2004. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a Member of the European Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His primary research interests include the causes of asthma, the lung microbiome in health and disease, and the genomics of lung and pleural cancer

Cookson and his colleague Miriam Moffatt have made many contributions to understanding the genetic causes of asthma (Zhang Y. et al., Nature Genetics 2003; Allen M. et al., Nature Genetics 2003; Moffatt M. et al., Nature 2007; Moffatt M. et al., New England Journal of Medicine 2010, Demenais et. al., Nature Genetics 2015). Many of the genes identified by these studies are concentrated in the airway epithelium, and asthma is now recognised as a disease of the airway mucosa. Genes identified by the group such as ORMDL3, IL33, TSLP and IL18R1 are the focus for new asthma therapies.

A parallel strand in their work has been to understand at the molecular level the interactions between genes and environment, with the ambition for prevention of the disease (Cookson, Nature 1999). Cookson was co-coordinator of the mutinational GABRIEL consortium that made many discoveries about the effects of genes and environment on asthma in Europe (Moffatt M. et al., New England Journal of Medicine 2010; Ege M. et al., New England Journal of Medicine 2011).

In the face of a prevailing wisdom that the airways of normal individuals are completely sterile, the group were first to use DNA sequencing to show that the airways contain a characteristic microbiota, and that this bacterial community is disturbed in patients with asthma and COPD (Hilty et al., PLoSOne 2010). Studies of the airway microbiome are now central to their research, applied to other lung diseases, including pulmonary fibrosis, cystic fibrosis, bronchiectasis and lung cancer. 

They have systematically cultured and genome-sequenced the prinicpal commensal airway bacteria, idenifying more than 50 new species (Cuthbertson et al., Communications Biology 2024), and are exploring how they interact with the airway mucosa to regulate immunity and protect against infection.

A major component of the Group's current activities is to understand lung cancer and pleural mesothelioma, applying their expertise in genetics and genomics. They have discovered immune weaknesses in mesothelioma (Nastase et al., Scientific Reports 2021) , and  shown that different types of lung cancer differ greatly in their immune profiles and their likely response to immunotherapies. The work reveals multiple new biomarkers to guide targeted therapy for thoracic malignancies