Professor Matthew Brown

Professor Matt Brown
MBBS, MD, FRACP
Director, Group Leader, Autoimmunity Program

Email: matt.brown@uq.edu.au
Phone: +61 7 3443 7018
For patient enquiries, please phone +61 7 3443 7078

Biography

Professor Matt Brown is currently the Institute Director and Professor of Immunogenetics at The University of Queensland, based at the Diamantina Institute and Institute of Molecular Biosciences, a position he has held since September 2005. Prior to that he was Professor of Musculoskeletal Sciences, University of Oxford, where he worked since 1994. He initially trained in rheumatology in Sydney, and remains clinically active, with a special interest in ankylosing spondylitis (AS).

Research Interests

Professor Brown's group researches genetics of common diseases, particularly musculoskeletal diseases. They are the central genetics research centre for the Australo-Anglo-American Spondyloarthritis Consortium, the main international AS genetics group. In addition, the group is performing genomewide association studies in multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis, cervical cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, schizophrenia, asthma and several other diseases. Professor Brown is a Principal Investigator of the Wellcome Trust Case-Control Consortium which did much of the development work and proof of principle studies for genomewide association studies, and is now involved in developing the approaches required for downstream genetics research (resequencing, fine-mapping, copy number variation studies). Professor Brown’s group also collaborates with researchers at the MRC Mammalian Research Facility Harwell, England, in ENU-mutagenesis approaches to develop new mouse strains with bone and joint disorders. Other major collaborations include with Professor Jon Tobias and Dr Celia Gregson (Bristol, UK) on genetics of high bone mass, Professor Huji Xu (Shanghai, China) on genetics of rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis in Han Chinese, and Professor Jamie Craig and Dr Kathryn Burdon (Adelaide, Aus) on genetics of ocular disorders.

Research Projects

• Genetics of Common Bone and Joint Diseases
  Ankylosing spondylitis
  Rheumatoid arthritis
  Osteoporosis
   
• Interethnic mapping of common human diseases
  Ankylosing spondylitis
  Rheumatoid arthritis
  Schizophrenia
   
• ENU mutagenesis and models of musculoskeletal diseases
• Functional characterization of genetic variants in the IL23R pathway associated with ankylosing spondylitis
• Gene deserts involved in ankylosing spondylitis
• Genetics of multiple sclerosis
• Novel gene-mapping approaches using next-generation sequencing

10 Recent Publications

1. ‘Genome-wide association study of ankylosing spondylitis identifies non-MHC susceptibility loci.’ Reveille JD, Sims AM, Danoy P, Evans DM, Leo P, Pointon JJ, Jin R, Zhou X, Bradbury LA, Appleton LH, Davis JC, Diekman L, Doan T, Dowling A, Duan R, Duncan EL, Farrar C, Hadler J, Harvey D, Karaderi T, Mogg R, Pomeroy E, Pryce K, Taylor J, Savage L, Deloukas P, Kumanduri V, Peltonen L, Ring SM, Whittaker P, Glazov E, Thomas GP, Maksymowych WP, Inman RD, Ward MM, Stone MA, Weisman MH, Wordsworth BP, Brown MA. Nat Genet;42:123-7, 2010.
2. ‘Genomewide association study identifies new multiple sclerosis susceptibility loci on chromosomes 12 and 20.’ The Australian and New Zealand Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium (Brown MA, principal investigator). Nat Genet. 41(7), 824-8, 2009.
3. ‘Association scan of 14,500 nonsynonymous SNPs in four diseases identifies autoimmunity variants’. Wellcome Trust Case-Control Consortium (Brown MA, principal investigator), Australo-Anglo-American Spondyloarthritis Consortium (Brown MA, principal investigator), Nat Genet, Nat Genet, 39, 1329-1337, 2007.
4. ‘Genomewide association study of 14,000 cases in seven common diseases and 3,000 shared controls’. Wellcome Trust Case-Control Consortium (Brown MA, principal investigator), Nature. 447, 661-84, 2007.
5. ‘A recurrent mutation in the BMP type 1 receptor ACVR1 causes inherited and sporadic fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva’. Shore EM, Xu M, Feldman GJ, Fenstermacher DA, The FOP International Research Consortium, Brown MA, Kaplan FS. Nature Genet, 38 (5), 525-527, 2006.
6. ‘ERAP1 but not IL23R is associated with ankylosing spondylitis in a Han Chinese population’. Davidson SI, Wu X, Wei M, Danoy P, Duncan EL, Cai Q, Sun L, Wang N, Yu Q, Xu A, Fu Y, Brown MA*, Xu H*. Arthritis Rheum, 60:3263-3268, 2009. *equal senior author.
7. ‘Genetic Analyses in a Sample of Individuals With High or Low Bone Density Demonstrates Association With Multiple Wnt Pathway Genes.’ Sims AM, Shephard N, Carter K, Doan T, Dowling A, Duncan EL, Eisman J, Jones G, Nicholson G, Prince RL, Seeman E, Thomas G, Wass JA. and Brown MA. J Bone Miner Res, 23(4), 499-506, 2008.
8. ‘Prospective meta-analysis of IL-1 gene complex polymorphisms confirms associations with ankylosing spondylitis.’ Sims AM, Timms AE, Bruges-Armas J, Chou CT, Doan T, Dowling A, Fialho RN, Gergely P, Gladman DD, Inman R, Kauppi M, Kaarela K, Laiho K, Maksymowych W, Rahman P, Reveille JD, Tuomilehto J, Wordsworth BP, Xu H, Brown MA. Ann Rheum Dis, 67(9), 1305-9, 2008.
9. ‘Common variants in the region around Osterix are associated with bone mineral density and growth in childhood.’ Timpson NJ, Tobias JH, Richards JB, Soranzo N, Duncan EL, Sims AM, Whittaker P, Kumanduri V, Zhai G, Glaser B, Eisman J, Jones G, Nicholson G, Prince R, Seeman E, Spector T, Brown MA, Peltonen L, Smith GD, Deloukas P, Evans DM. Hum Mol Genet. 18(8):1510-7, 2009.
10. ‘Genetics and genomics of ankylosing spondylitis’. Thomas GP, Brown MA. Immunological Reviews, 233, 162-180, 2010.

Lab members

Legacy

Dr Anne-Marie Sims – Postdoctoral Scientist, Astra-Zenica, Manchester, England.
Dr Yun Zhang, Lecturer, William Harvey Research Institute, University of London, England.
Dr Andrew Timms – Postdoctoral Scientist with Professor Robert Terkeltaub, San Diego, USA.
Dr Carles Vilarino-Guell – Research Fellow, Department of Neurogenetics, Mayo Clinic Florida, USA.

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