Sarah Rice

University of Manchester

Dr Sarah Rice graduated from the University of Manchester in 2009 with a First Class Master of Pharmacy (MPharm) degree, following which she went on to attain professional registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC). Her longstanding interest in precision medicine led her to Newcastle University in 2011 to undertake a PhD in epithelial physiology and genetics, characterising rare genetic variants causing nephrolithiasis. From 2016-2021, she conducted postdoctoral research in musculoskeletal genetics. This work primarily aimed to identify osteoarthritis effector genes (eGenes) along with regulatory mechanisms impacted by risk single nucleotide variants (SNVs) in relevant cell types (PMIDs: 33760386, 33760378). Much of this work focussed on the interplay between genetics and DNA methylation in osteoarthritis (PMID: 32273577). In 2021, she gained research independence following the award of a Versus Arthritis Career Development Fellowship, and in 2026 moved her laboratory group to the University of Manchester Centre for Genetics and Genomics. The Rice Lab’s research vision is to apply functional genomic technologies to conduct the full spectrum of variant-to-function analyses in complex musculoskeletal disease. This encompasses statistical approaches (enrichment and QTL analyses), functional finemapping (including Cas9 genome and epigenome modulation) and biological modelling (in primary cell cultures). A particular focus of her lab’s research is the identification of cell- and tissue-specific gene enhancers that can influence the risk of osteoarthritis and osteoporosis during both human skeletal development and in older age (PMID:39579763). The overarching goal of this work is to understand disease aetiology and identify novel, targeted interventions.