Krina Zondervan

Contact information

Email
krina.zondervan@wrh.ox.ac.uk

Telephone
+44 (0)1865 740382 / 221003 (PA)

Colleges

St Edmund Hall

GROUP MEMBERS

Rebecca Chaplin (PA to Krina Zondervan)

Kelly Barrett (Research Nurse)

Lisa Buck (Research Nurse)

Josie Everatt (DPhil Student)

Kurtis Garbutt (Data Scientist and Programme Manager)

Tatjana Gibbons (DPhil Student)

Omero Poli Netto (Visiting Senior Research Fellow)

Nilufer Rahmioglu (Senior Research Fellow)

Bhuchitra Singh (DPhil Student)

Fitnat Topbas (DPhil Student)

Outi Uimari (Visiting Clinical Research Fellow)

Yifan Wang (DPhil Student)

Affiliated:

Lydia Coxon (Postdoc, Vincent group)

Lysia Demetriou (Postdoc, Vincent group)

Rebecca Dragovic (Senior Postdoctoral Fellow)

Rachel Reid-McCann (Postdoc, Vincent group)

Katy Vincent (Professor of Gynaecological Pain)

Biography

I came to Oxford on an Erasmus exchange scholarship in 1993, after an MSc in Biomedical Sciences (Cum Laude, 1995), at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Following a DPhil (NDOG/DPH, St Edmund Hall, 1999) on the epidemiology of chronic pelvic pain, I was awarded an MRC Training Research Fellowship in Genetic Epidemiology based at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, which included an MSc in Genetic Epidemiology (Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2001) and research periods at the Queensland Institute for Medical Research, Australia and the Dept of Human Genetics, University of Pittsburgh, USA.

In 2007, I was awarded a Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellowship and in 2012 became Co-Director of the Endometriosis CaRe centre in Oxford (with Christian Becker). I was appointed as Professor of Reproductive and Genomic Epidemiology in 2015. I am Fellow by Special Election at St Edmund Hall. Awards include Outstanding Female Scientist (AcademiaNet, Wellcome Trust nomination, 2013), Honorary Skou Professorship at the University of Aarhus, Denmark (2019), Honorary Fellowship ad eundem by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, UK (2022), and Honorary Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2024). I have served on numerous boards and funding committees in the areas of women's health and genomics.

Krina Zondervan

MSc DPhil FRCOG FMedSci

Head of Department, Professor of Reproductive & Genomic Epidemiology, Co-Director Endometriosis CaRe Centre.

Fellow, St Edmund Hall

Research

My group works on understanding the pathogenesis of women's health disorders through genomic, molecular, and environmental epidemiological research methods. We are based within the Oxford Endometriosis CaRe Centre, of which I am co-director, and collaborate with a large network of research groups (inter)nationally.

We focus in particular on endometriosis - a common, poorly understood chronic inflammatory condition in women, involving the presence of endometrial-like cells in extra-uterine pelvic sites. The condition causes pain and sub-fertility; is estimated to affect 5-10% of women in their reproductive years (190 million women worldwide and 1.6 million in the UK); has limited diagnostic and treatment options; and has a major impact on health-related quality of life of sufferers and their families that can last beyond menopause.

Heritable factors are involved in endometriosis risk. Identifying which DNA variants underlie this heritability will improve our understanding of pathogenesis and inform treatment development. I co-founded the International Endometriosis Genome Consortium (IEGC) in which we are conducting the largest collaborative genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of endometriosis to date (e.g. Nature Genetics 2011,2012,2023; Nature Communications 2017), the most recent analyses including data from more than 60,000 women with endometriosis.

In addition to continued genetic discovery work, I have led a large global initiative in endometriosis research to develop standardised deep phenotyping tools and sample collection protocols (WERF EPHect); these are implemented so far in more than 60 endometriosis research centres worldwide. In the Endometriosis CaRe centre we are currently using WERF EPHect-compliant data and samples from women attending our centre to explore what biological pathways implicated genetic variants 'signpost', and how findings can aid discovery of novel treatment targets and biomarkers.

To this end, within the Centre we have established a programme of translational research and have established very strong links with industry partners to allow translation of our research findings. This work is made possible through the much appreciated involvement of many women with and without the disease, who contribute information and samples to our studies and through our many collaborations within the WERF EPHect network and beyond.

Funding

The Wellcome Trust; The Medical Research Council; National Institutes of Health USA; World Endometriosis Research Foundation; The European Union; The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and industry partners.