Research
Arthur chairs the Cambridge Immunology Strategic Network steering group and leads the Gastrointestinal Diseases theme of the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre. This is a partnership, funded and supported by the NIHR, between Cambridge University Hospitals and the University of Cambridge to deliver ground-breaking research that benefits patients.
Arthur's laboratory investigates the biology of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. These are two inflammatory bowel diseases that can affect individuals at any age, most often in early adulthood. They emerge from a complex gene - environment interaction. The actual triggers remain still unknown.
Employing and developing a wide range of technologies, from complex genetic models to sophisticated liquid chromatography mass spectrometry, the team explores the major biological mechanisms that are affected by risk genes of inflammatory bowel disease. This has generated important insights into how autophagy and endoplasmic reticulum stress collude to drive a pathological unfolded protein response. And most recently led to the discovery of a very fundamental purine enzyme that enables a metabolic cycle balancing electron transfer into mitochondria and controlling immunometabolism of macrophages.
Group members:
James A West
Katharina Ramshorn
Lorraine M Holland
Lukas Unger
Alumni:
Jun Inoue
James O Jones
Jonathan W Ashcroft
Janice Y J Lee
Muhammad N B Md-Ibrahim
O Stephen Ojo
Ester Pagano
Georg Thomas Schneditz
Giuseppe Sirago
Thomas Flint