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“UWI as a base for research offers an unparalleled set of opportunities in areas such as sickle cell disease, severe childhood malnutrition and hypertension, for example. Our existing understanding of determinants of risk, and our understanding of the metabolic adaptations, when allied with the tools being made available as a part of the genomics era, should allow us to achieve new and important insights into causal pathways that influence disease risk and disease outcomes.”

Dr. Colin McKenzie

SENIOR LECTURER, TROPICAL METABOLISM RESEARCH UNIT
TROPICAL MEDICINE RESEARCH INSTITUTE
FACULTY OF MEDICAL SCIENCES
MONA CAMPUS, JAMAICA
Tel: (876) 977-6251 • Email: Colin.Mckenzie02@uwimona.edu.jm

PROFILE

Colin A. McKenzie is a Senior Lecturer at the Tropical Metabolism Research Unit (TMRU). Educated at Jamaica College, he obtained the degree of MBBS with Honours at UWI, Mona finishing at the top of his class. He was elected to the Rhodes Scholarship for Jamaica in 1991 and pursued studies in the genetics of cardiovascular disease at the University of Oxford leading to the award of the degree of DPhil. He has continued research in the area of genetics at UWI. He has been the lead author or co-author of papers that have been published in top-rated peer-reviewed scientific journals such as the Lancet, Nature Genetics, the American Journal of Human Genetics, Blood, and Human Molecular Genetics. Dr. McKenzie also participates in teaching and training at Mona. He lectures in Human Genetics to undergraduates in the Faculties of Medical Sciences and Pure and Applied Sciences; he is the University Examiner for Human Molecular Biology. He participates in the teaching of the MSc in Human Nutrition (at the Tropical Medicine Research Institute), and in the supervision of MSc, MPhil and PhD candidates. Dr. McKenzie gives service in the Hypertension Clinic at the University Hospital of the West Indies and has participated in cardiovascular disease Working Group meetings of the Ministry of Health, Jamaica in an effort to improve care. He has also been a member of a Genomics and Proteomics Working Group at the National Heart, Lung and Blood institute (NHLBI), National Institute of Health (NIH), USA. He serves as a member of the Selection Committee for the Rhodes Scholarship for Jamaica and as a member of the Board of Directors of the NCB Insurance Company Limited. He was recently re-elected to the Executive of West Indies Group of University Teachers (WIGUT) as the Representative for the Faculty of Medical Sciences (Clinical).

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Dr. McKenzie’s principal interest lies in trying to identify and define relationships between heritable variation and interindividual phenotypic variation. In practice, he is involved in projects where the main effort is directed at identifying genetic variants that influence either the risk of developing diseases or the outcomes of those diseases (e.g. hypertension, oedematous severe childhood malnutrition, sickle cell disease, and type 2 diabetes), as well as in projects that focus on non-disease characteristics within the range of “normal variation” (e.g. high levels of phaeomelanin in hair (“redheads”), body mass index, and foetal haemoglobin levels among otherwise normal persons).