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Professor Rachel Chambers

biog-chambers

Biography

Rachel C. Chambers (PhD, FRSB) is Professor of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology and Director of the Centre for Inflammation and Tissue Repair (CITR) within the Division of Medicine at University College London CITR currently comprises five principal investigators and a total of 34 staff.  Professor Chambers is also Vice-Dean for Enterprise within the Faculty of Medical Sciences. She received her undergraduate degree from King's College London and completed her PhD studies at the National Heart and Lung Institute in London in 1995.

Research Interests

Her research focus is on the elucidation of the cell and molecular mechanisms leading to lung inflammation, remodelling and fibrosis. Current work is aimed at delineating the key inflammatory and pro-fibrotic signalling pathways underlying the development of lung fibrosis, acute lung injury and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Professor Chambers also leads a fibrosis discovery biology group at UCL as part of a major academia-industry partnership with GSK.  She is also the academic lead for an MRC and GSK co-funded multi-institutional open innovation research network in the area of fibrosis and immuno-inflammation - the Experimental Medicine Initiative to Explore New Therapies (EMINENT).  She also recently took on the role of Associate Editor for Thorax, one of the world's leading respiratory medicine journals.

Key publications

Scotton CJ, Krupiczojc MA, Koenigshoff M, Mercer PF, Lee YCG, Kaminski N, Morser J, Post JM, Maher TM, Nicholson AG, Moffatt JD, Laurent GJ, Derian CK, Eickelberg O, Chambers RC. (2009). Increased local expression of coagulation factor X contributes to the fibrotic response in human and murine lung injury. J Clin Invest 119, 2550-2563.

Mercer PF, Johns RJ, Scotton CJ, Krupiczojc MA, Howell DCJ, Koenigshoff M, McAnulty RJ, Das A, Thorley AJ, Tetley TD, Eickelberg O, Chambers RC. (2009). Pulmonary epithelium is a prominent source of proteinase-activated receptor-1-inducible CCL2 in pulmonary fibrosis. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 179, 414-25.

Scotton CS, Alexander R, Datta A, Mercer, PF, Blanchard A and Chambers RC. (2013) Ex vivo micro-CT analysis of bleomycin-induced lung fibrosis for pre-clinical drug evaluation. Eur Respir J. 2013 Dec;42(6):1633-45.

José RJ, Williams AE, Mercer PF, Sulikowski MG, Brown JS, Chambers RC. (2015) Regulation of neutrophilic inflammation by proteinase-activated receptor 1 during bacterial pulmonary infection. J Immunol 194, 6024-34.

Mercer PF, Woodcock HV, Eley JD, Platé M, Sulikowski MG, Durrenberger PF, Franklin L, Nanthakumar CB, Man Y, Genovese F, McAnulty RJ, Yang S, Maher TM, Nicholson AG, Blanchard AD, Marshall RP, Lukey PT, Chambers RC. (2016) Exploration of a potent PI3 kinase/ mTOR inhibitor as a novel anti-fibrotic agent in IPF. Thorax. 71: 701-711.