Dr Maxim Freydin

Profile

Maxim Freydin studied Biology and Biostatistics at Tomsk State University and got a PhD in Genetics in Research Institute for Medical Genetics (Tomsk, Russia). He obtained post-doctoral experience in Karolinska Institutet (Sweden), University of Oxford, Imperial College London, Royal Brompton Hospital, and King's College London (UK). In 2022, Maxim joined the School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences, where he continued his research in genetics and genomics of complex human diseases. Since 2022, Maxim also serves a Specialty Chief Editor in Frontiers in Genetics: Human and Medical Genomics.

Undergraduate Teaching

Basic Medical Genetics (SNU106) on the Nanchang Joint Programme

Biological and Biomedical Sciences Research Project (BIO600/BMD600)

Research Design and Analysis (BMD205)

Postgraduate Teaching

Bioinformatics Research Project (BIO702)

Research

Research Interests:

My main research interest is genetics and genomics of complex human diseases and traits. I use genetic associations and omics approaches to discover underlying pathways and reveal predictive biomarkers. I am particularly interested in genetics of pain syndromes, allergy, and infectious disorders. Most recent projects included large-scale genetic and omics studies of low back pain, chronic widespread pain, fatigue, intervertebral disc degeneration, and hearing loss.

Genetics of inverse comorbidity 

The area of my special interest is genetic basis of multimorbidity, a combination of more than one disease in the same patients. There are multiple examples for such combinations occurring more often than expected by chance, suggesting shared molecular mechanisms underlying them. Even more interesting is a situation when diseases rarely or never co-occur (called inverse comorbidity, or dystropy), suggesting mechanisms of mutual exclusion for some pathological pathways. Examples of such dystropic diseases include allergic disorders and tuberculosis, Chagas disease and cancer, Alzheimer's disease and cancer, multiple sclerosis and pulmonary diseases. Understanding molecular mechanisms of inverse comorbidity may provide novel treatment targets and biomarkers for complex human diseases. For the time being, I am using genetic epidemiology and bioinformatics approaches, while setting up experimental pipelines to investigate genetics of some examples of inverse comorbidity.

This line of research is currently funded by Rosetrees Trust.

Pharmacogenomics of postoperative pain

Transcriptomic profiling of neuropathic pain in HIV patients 

Publications

Selected publications:

Danckert NP, Freidin MB (joint first), Smith IG, Wells PM, Naeini MK, Visconti A, Compte R, MacGregor A, Williams FMK. Treatment response in rheumatoid arthritis is predicted by the microbiome: a large observational study in UK DMARD-naïve patients. Rheumatology. 2024 Jan 30:keae045. 10.1093/rheumatology/keae045

Freidin MB, Cheetham N, Duncan EL, Steves CJ, Doores KJ, Malim MH, Rossi N, Lord JM et al. Long-COVID fatigue is not predicted by pre-pandemic plasma IL-6 levels in mild COVID-19. Inflammation Research. 2023; 72(5): 947-953. 10.1007/s00011-023-01722-2

Trpchevska N, Freidin MB (joint first), Broer L, et al. Genome-wide association meta-analysis identifies 48 risk variants and highlights the role of the stria vascularis in hearing loss. Am J Hum Genet. 2022 Jun 2;109(6):1077-1091. 10.1016/j.ajhg.2022.04.010

Freidin MB, Tsepilov YA, Stanaway IB, et al. Sex- and age-specific genetic analysis of chronic back pain. Pain. 2021 Apr 1;162(4):1176-1187. 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000002100 

Freidin MB, Stalteri MA, Wells PM, et al. An association between chronic widespread pain and the gut microbiome. Rheumatology. 2021 Aug 2;60(8):3727-3737. 10.1093/rheumatology/keaa847

Menni C, Valdes AM, Freidin MB, et al. Real-time tracking of self-reported symptoms to predict potential COVID-19. Nat Med. 2020 Jul;26(7):1037-1040. 10.1038/s41591-020-0916-2

Freidin MB, Tsepilov YA, Palmer M, et al. Insight into the genetic architecture of back pain and its risk factors from a study of 509,000 individuals. Pain. 2019 Jun;160(6):1361-1373. 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000001514

Freidin MB, Wells HRR, Potter T, et al. Metabolomic markers of fatigue: Association between circulating metabolome and fatigue in women with chronic widespread pain. Biochim Biophys Acta Mol Basis Dis. 2018 Feb;1864(2):601-606. 10.1016/j.bbadis.2017.11.025

Freidin MB, Freydina DV, Leung M, et al. Circulating tumor DNA outperforms circulating tumor cells for KRAS mutation detection in thoracic malignancies. Clin Chem. 2015 Oct;61(10):1299-304. 10.1373/clinchem.2015.242453

For a full list please click here and explore Maxim Freydin's Google Scholar Profile

Supervision

Luisa Fernanda Cerda Osnaya (PhD student)

Siddharth Roy (PhD student) - co-supervisor

Collaborators

Internal

Prof. Caroline Brennan

External

Prof. Frances Williams (KCL); Prof. Claire Steves (KCL); Dr. Harriet Kemp (Imperial); Prof. Eric Lim (Imperial); Prof. Chrostopher Sivert Nielsen (NIPH)