Professor, Cardiovascular Research Institute, National University of Singapore

• Speaker, Cardiovascular Sciences, and Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disorders Symposium, 18 Sep 2021

Prof Roger Foo is a Professor of Medicine at the Cardiovascular Research Institute, Assistant Dean of Research at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and Senior Consultant lead for the Cardiac Genetics Clinic, National University Heart Centre. He is a graduate of NUS Medicine and spent 20 years abroad before returning to Singapore in 2013. He completed his specialist training at Kings College Hospital, London, UK, and Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, UK.

In 2003, he was awarded the Wellcome Trust Fellowship to pursue research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York.  He returned to Cambridge in 2006 as a British Heart Foundation Fellow and Consultant Physician, before eventually returning to Singapore.

His lab was the first to publish an epigenomic map of the failing human heart in 2012. More recently, his lab has published an in-depth analysis of the cardiac chromatin 3D organisation, and also reported the discovery of a long noncoding RNA, called Singheart, which regulates key cardiac gene expression. The approach of the lab is to deep dive into the epigenome of the heart, using advanced technology including single cell transcriptomics and Crispr-genome editing to explore frontiers, in continuing aspirations to discover novel avenues for therapies or biomarkers.

Prof Foo is also a keen advocate for the application of genomics to the clinic. He leads the Biomedical Research Council (BMRC) Rare Disease research programme, SUREkids. SUREkids has developed a clinical whole exome sequencing pipeline, which is for clinical use in Singapore and regionally.