Immunity, Inflammation and Transplantation

This Theme’s Focus

Immune-mediated diseases (IMD)
We want to understand what causes these conditions, why some patients respond to current treatments and others don’t, and how to match the right treatments to patients to personalise the therapies they receive
Immune responses in infection
We are studying patients with COVID-19, including long-COVID. We also want to find ways of improving vaccine responses (including to COVID-19 and flu) and testing other ways of harnessing the immune system to prevent infections
Immune responses to a solid organ transplant
Transplants are life-saving but we don’t have enough organs and they don’t last forever. We are working to find ways to improve organs before they are transplanted and to reduce rejection responses to transplanted organs

The immune system enables the body to defend itself against infection. But excessive or inappropriate immune responses can lead to autoimmune diseases, where the immune system attacks the patient’s own tissues. It can also lead to rejection of transplanted organs and to unintended tissue damage in many infectious diseases (including COVID-19).

Currently, the medicines we use to control the immune system across these conditions, for example steroids, are not specific and have effects on many immune cells and other cells in the body, leading to unwanted side effects.

Our Immunity, Inflammation and Transplantation theme will use cutting-edge technologies, profiling the genetic sequence of individual cells in blood and tissue samples taken from patients, to identify new treatments, and to match the right treatment to the right patient.

Theme Leads

Professor Menna Clatworthy

Professor of Translational Immunology, Consultant Nephrologist, Director of Clinical Studies.
Email: mrc38@cam.ac.uk

Professor Arthur Kaser

Honorary Consultant Gastroenterologist

Email: ak729@cam.ac.uk

Professor Paul Lehner

Honorary Consultant, Infectious Diseases

Email: pjl30@cam.ac.uk

Meet our researchers

We are working to understand how the immune system contributes to disease in three areas of medicine:

Immune-mediated diseases (IMD)

Conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease, vasculitis and rheumatoid arthritis affect up to 10% of people in their lifetime but ‘one size fits all’ treatments mean that some people get too much immune suppression, leading to infection, while others don’t get enough, so their disease symptoms are not well controlled. We are combining information from electronic health records with genetic information from blood and tissues to gain new insights into what drives inflammation and why some people don’t respond to our current treatments. This will allow us to identify ‘biomarkers’ or tests that can help personalise treatments, and to find new drug targets.

Immune responses in infection

The immune can overreact to some infections, causing collateral (unintended) damage, which leads to many of the complications of diseases like COVID-19. On the other hand, some patients’ immune systems ‘under-react’ and do not give a strong enough response to vaccines, leaving them open to infection. We are studying patients with COVID-19 to understand what causes long-COVID and how best to diagnose it. We are also working with vulnerable groups of patients with poor vaccine responses, running clinical trials to identify medicines that can protect them from infection and applying medicines to help them generate better vaccine responses.

Immune responses to a solid organ transplant

Organ transplantation can provide a new kidney or liver for those with organ failure, and can be life-saving and life-transforming for patients. However, many patients wait a long time, or even die waiting for a transplant because there aren’t enough organs available. Even those that receive a transplant know that their organ won’t last forever because of the immune response to the transplant and the side effects of the drugs we use to prevent rejection. We want to find treatments (for example, organ-repairing stem cells) that can be given before an organ is transplanted, that enable more organs to be used. We will also collect tissue and blood to study recipient immune responses after the transplant to understand who is most at risk of rejection so that we can give them better, more targeted immune suppression medicines, helping to improve graft survival and function.

Latest News

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Treating newly-diagnosed Crohn’s patients with advanced therapy leads to dramatic improvements in outcomes

February 22, 2024

A large-scale clinical trial of treatment strategies for Crohn’s disease has shown that offering early advanced therapy to all patients straight after diagnosis can drastically improve outcomes.

Coronavirus. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.

Underactive immune response may explain obesity link to COVID-19 severity

March 23, 2023

Individuals who are obese may be more susceptible to severe COVID-19 because of a poorer inflammatory immune response.

Infected organoid (Credit: Teresa Brevini)

Off-patent liver disease drug could prevent COVID-19 infection

December 6, 2022

Cambridge scientists have identified an off-patent drug that…

Blood sample being placed in centrifuge - NIHR Cambridge BRC image

World-first trial to transfuse lab-grown red blood cells is underway in Cambridge

November 9, 2022

Red blood cells that have been grown in a laboratory have now been transfused into another person at the NIHR Cambridge Clinical Research Facility in a world first clinical trial.

Nurse and young participant in NIHR BioResource clinic - Image from NIHR BioResource

New cohort created to help further research in Paediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease

April 28, 2022

Cambridge researchers studying Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) in children will now have access to a panel of young volunteers with IBD, thanks to a new research cohort from the NIHR BioResource.

Cambridge recruits first patient to national inflammation study

April 1, 2022

Cambridge recruits first patient in a new national vasculitis trial

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Cancer drug gives hope in treating heart attacks

January 31, 2022

Cambridge researchers have found a drug used to treat cancer could help with heart attack recovery.

Could a cancer drug be key to helping patients recover from a heart attack?

October 7, 2021

A trial is underway in Cambridge to investigate whether a cancer drug could improve the recovery of heart attack patients, by targeting the immune system.

Theatres at CUH - Image from Cambridge University Health Partners

How is research helping with life-saving liver transplants?

September 29, 2021

Professor Ludovic Vallier, theme lead for transplantation and regenerative medicine explains about the latest research that is happening in Cambridge.

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World first for AI and machine learning to treat Covid patients worldwide

September 15, 2021

Researchers across the world have used artificial intelligence to predict Covid patients’ oxygen needs on a global scale.

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Immunity, Inflammation and Transplantation Case Studies

Increasing the number of organs available for transplantation

October 16, 2024

Cambridge researchers provided evidence that showed that…

Could biopsies of donor kidneys help reduce waiting lists?

October 16, 2024

In the UK approximately 5,200 people are waiting for a kidney…

Surgery at CUH - Image from Cambridge University Health Partners

Improving dialysis for kidney patients

October 16, 2024

Cambridge researchers are investigating why arteriovenous…

Grapic of a liver in red, blue and green

Patients better off accepting a ‘poorer quality’ liver than waiting for a ‘better’ one, research shows

October 16, 2024

Research has shown that patients waiting for a liver transplant…

How is research helping with life-saving liver transplants?

October 16, 2024

Professor Ludovic Vallier, who was lead for the former transplantation…

Surgery image - image is blurry with equipment box in focus - image from Cambridge University Health Partners

Repairing damaged donor livers course increase life-saving transplants

October 16, 2024

Growing mini bile ducts in a lab to repair a damaged livers…

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Immunity, Inflammation and Transplantation Publications

Antibiotic resistance determination using Enterococcus faecium whole-genome sequences: a diagnostic accuracy study using genotypic and phenotypic data

March 15, 2024

A biomarker-stratified comparison of top-down versus accelerated step-up treatment strategies for patients with newly diagnosed Crohn’s disease (PROFILE): a multicentre, open-label randomised controlled trial

March 4, 2024

Genetics of circulating inflammatory proteins identifies drivers of immune-mediated disease risk and therapeutic targets

July 18, 2023

Comparative analysis of the risks of hospitalisation and death associated with SARS-CoV-2 omicron (B.1.1.529) and delta (B.1.617.2) variants in England: a cohort study

March 17, 2022

Hospitalisation for COVID-19 predicts long lasting cerebrovascular impairment: A prospective observational cohort study

February 15, 2022

The NIHR Cambridge BRC is part of the NIHR and hosted by Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in partnership with the University of Cambridge. We are at the heart of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, Europe’s largest health research area.

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8 Jan

The Cambridge-led IVORY trial has shown that targeting the immune system, by giving a low-dose of aldesleukin, could prevent future heart attacks by nearly 8%.

Learn more about the study >>https://bit.ly/4aLzW6Q

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Milner Therapeutics Institute @themilnerinst ·

6 Jan

📣 The Milner Consortium Call returns with its sixth call for research proposals. Academic researchers – join our Q&A webinar to learn more and ask questions about the Call!

🗓️ 22 Jan ⏰ 10am 📍 Online

🔗 Register: https://ow.ly/5PMb50XCIuF

🔗 More info: http://www.milner.cam.ac.uk/consortiumcall/

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5 Jan

👉 Want to help shape a future trial focused on preventing falls in older people?
👉 Are you an older adult and/or family member/carer? 👉 Free on Wed 21st Jan 2026 at 13.30 for an online group?
👉 Contact James Piercy - james@brainhrc.org
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31 Dec

🎉Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year!🎉
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24 Dec

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#Thankyou to all our amazing staff, everyone who has supported us and all those who took part in #research this year!
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22 Dec

🥳 As 2025 draws to a close, we’ve put together a snapshot of some of our key research stories over the year.
🥳 We’d like to thank everyone who took part in, or contributed to our research over 2025!
To learn more >>
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Immunity, Inflammation and Transplantation

This Theme’s Focus

Theme Leads

Professor Menna Clatworthy

Professor Arthur Kaser

Professor Paul Lehner

We are working to understand how the immune system contributes to disease in three areas of medicine:

Immune-mediated diseases (IMD)

Immune responses in infection

Immune responses to a solid organ transplant

Latest News

Immunity, Inflammation and Transplantation Case Studies

Immunity, Inflammation and Transplantation Publications

Contact Us

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