DrEoin Brennan

Dr. Eoin Brennan is an Assistant Professor at the Conway Institute, University College Dublin. Eoin graduated from University College Cork in 2004 with an honours degree in Genetics and in 2008 completed his PhD at Queen's University Belfast, studying the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms of diabetic kidney disease. In 2009, Eoin moved to the UCD Diabetes Complications Research Centre to study the genetics and signalling pathways implicated in diabetes and microvascular complications of diabetes. In 2014, Eoin continued his research at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Australia. During this time he investigated endogenous lipids and non-coding RNA therapeutics in complications of Diabetes, with a specific focus on targeting vascular lesions in aortas and kidneys.

In 2019, Eoin was appointed an Ad Astra Assistant Professor, School of Medicine, UCD. His translationally-focused research group are investigating the non-coding genome, and the development of novel treatment strategies for arresting the progression of atherosclerosis. His multidisciplinary research programme utilises preclinical in vivo models of atherosclerosis, RNA sequencing technologies and biobank development and expansion in collaboration with local clinical sites. He is also a lead investigator in the GENIE (Genetics of Nephropathy, an International Effort) Consortium, an international consortium investigating genetic mechanisms underpinning diabetic kidney disease. His team are developing pipelines to prioritise and functionally interrogate lead genetic and epigenetic signals emerging from large case-control studies. These pipelines integrate kidney-cell based assays, kidney organoids and zebrafish models of kidney damage to interrogate candidate loci at the gene and mutation level.