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

Woman with stomach pain: This image was purchased from Abobe Stock with a lifetime usage

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

February 22, 2024

Coronavirus. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.

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

March 23, 2023

Infected organoid (Credit: Teresa Brevini)

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

December 6, 2022

Blood sample being placed in centrifuge - NIHR BRC: Cambridge image

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

November 9, 2022

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 recruits first patient to national inflammation study

April 1, 2022

Man holding his chest - by Pexels from Pixabay

Cancer drug gives hope in treating heart attacks

January 31, 2022

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

October 7, 2021

Theatres at CUH - Image from Cambridge University Health Partners

How is research helping with life-saving liver transplants?

September 29, 2021

Person typing code into laptop: Free for use under the Pixabay Content Licence.

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

September 15, 2021

Previous Next

Immunity, Inflammation and Transplantation Case Studies

Increasing the number of organs available for transplantation

October 16, 2024

Could biopsies of donor kidneys help reduce waiting lists?

October 16, 2024

Surgery at CUH - Image from Cambridge University Health Partners

Improving dialysis for kidney patients

October 16, 2024

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

Lab sampling - NIHR BRC: Cambridge image

How is research helping with life-saving liver transplants?

October 16, 2024

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

Previous Next

Immunity, Inflammation and Transplantation Publications

Development and validation of an LC-MS/MS method for detection and quantification of in vivo derived metabolites of [Pyr1]apelin-13 in humans

December 27, 2019

High water vs. ad libitum water intake for autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease: a randomized controlled feasibility trial

October 30, 2019

The landscape of somatic mutation in normal colorectal epithelial cells

October 23, 2019

B cell receptor repertoire analysis in six immune-mediated diseases

September 25, 2019

TNF induces pathogenic programmed macrophage necrosis in tuberculosis through a mitochondrial-lysosomal-endoplasmic reticulum circuit..

August 29, 2019

The NIHR BRC: Cambridge 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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25 Aug

Congrats to @NIHR20 Research Leaders Prizewinners @CambridgeCRF Operations Director Caroline Saunders & @Cambridge_Uni & @CUH_NHS Neurosurgeon Benjamin Davies, who've both won awards for their leadership skills & commitment to patient-centred research: https://bit.ly/4y0HVFx

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21 Aug

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Medicine at Cambridge

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20 Aug

The Lung Immune Challenge Study, led by @Akhilesh_Jha (@HLRI_Cambridge), has reached a milestone with the final participant completing the first phase designed to investigate how immune systems respond to viral lung infections.

➡️ https://buff.ly/tXrD5v8

@The_MRC @CambridgeBRC

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18 Aug

Learn about two upcoming career development awards that can support you in undertaking short placements in another part of NIHR or a local authority to enhance your research training experience and academic career development.

📅 Join our webinar from 12-1pm on 3 September to

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12 Aug

📣 Only 20 places left for each session❗️

Whether you’re new to PPI, want to improve your knowledge & skills we’ve got the session for you!

These FREE events are only available to East Anglia researchers - tickets for other regions are now fully booked! http://bit.ly/Trg4PPI

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10 Aug

📣 Full day of Patient & Public Involvement (PPI) training available❗️

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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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