Matt Brown is a clinician-scientist who trained initially in medicine and rheumatology in Sydney, Australia before completing a Doctorate of Medicine based at University of Oxford, focusing on genetics of ankylosing spondylitis. In 2013 he was elected to Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Sciences in recognition for his achievements in genetics research. He was Chief Scientific Officer of Genomics England from 2021-26. He has recently returned to academic research into immunogenetics of axial spondyloarthritis, and the development of novel treatments for the disease.
Designing Genomics for Prevention, Equity, and Impact: England’s Life-Course Approach
England is implementing two large-scale population genomics programmes that deploy whole-genome sequencing (WGS) across the life course to generate evidence for routine clinical integration at national scale. Led by Genomics England in partnership with NHS England, these programmes function as implementation pilots within a universal healthcare system rather than conventional discovery studies.
The Generation Study applies WGS to 100,000 newborns to identify a defined set of rare, childhood-onset conditions with established or emerging therapeutic interventions. Concluding in 2027, it is generating empirical data on diagnostic yield, variant interpretation pipelines, consent models, return-of-results frameworks, and downstream clinical pathways required for scalable newborn genomic screening.
The Adult Population Genomics Programme will apply WGS to approximately 150,000 adults between 2030 and 2035, with analytic emphasis on pharmacogenomics, monogenic disease risk (notably hereditary cancer predisposition), and polygenic risk scores for common diseases. The programme is designed to evaluate the clinical validity, actionability, and health-system impact of pre-emptive genomic risk stratification, including integration with longitudinal electronic health records and prescribing systems.
Collectively, these programmes are informing the infrastructure required for sustained genomic medicine, including development of a lifelong “universal genomic record”, standards for WGS-derived data reuse across multiple clinical contexts, and methods to ensure robust performance across ancestrally diverse populations.