As a specialist heart and lung centre, innovation and research is a priority and this is reflected in the number of our staff engaged in research, many of whom are key opinion leaders and NIHR senior investigators.
The clinical structure at our hospitals has been developed to bring together clinical and research activities around specific care groups and disease areas.
Professor Dudley Pennell : Director of the Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Unit; research interests include development and use of magnetic resonance in cardiomyopathy; myocardial perfusion, coronary artery disease, myocardial iron measurements in thalassaemia.
Dr Duncan Macrae: paediatric intensive care; paediatric cardiovascular disease mechanisms and inflammatory responses; interventions to improve outcomes in paediatric intensive care.
Dr James Ware: cardiovascular genetics; the management of inherited cardiac conditions (ICCs) – particularly cardiomyopathies and channelopathies – and the prevention of sudden cardiac death.
Dr Jan Till: arrhythmias in childhood and evaluation of new treatments.
Dr Jonathan Clague: angioplasty and coronary bypass grafting; revascularization in blocked coronary arteries, development and evaluation of novel therapies including stem cells.
Dr John Wort: pulmonary arterial hypertension disease mechanism and evaluation of advanced therapies.
Dr Julene Carvalho: diagnosis of heart abnormalities and arrhythmias in the fetus including ultrasound techniques, echocardiography and biomarkers.
Professor Kim Fox: evaluation of new treatments for coronary heart disease.
Dr Mahmoud Barbir: familial hypercholestraemia its treatment and the use of LDL apheresis therapy.
Dr Majid M. Akhtar: cardiogenic shock, interventional cardiology, Takotsubo, secondary prevention.
Dr Mark Mason: myocardial protection, mode of action and efficacy of cardiac resynchronisation therapy.
Dr Michael Rigby: interventions in fetal cardiology, the use of telemedicine technologies in clinical practice.
Dr Miles Dalby: strategies and logistics of primary angioplasty for acute myocardial infarction, coronary thrombosis, coronary stent imaging and biology, transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI).
Professor Michael Gatzoulis and Dr Kostas Dimopoulos: mechanisms of adult congenital heart disease; disease management, late outcomes and prognostication; pregnancy and heart disease.
Professor Peter Collins: heart disease in women and the role and action of hormones on the cardiovascular system, cardiac syndrome X.
Dr Piers Daubeney and Dr Helena Gardiner: paediatric congenital heart disease including biological mechanism , epidemiology, assessment in utero and its management through intervention studies.
Dr Raad Mohiaddin: cardiovascular magnetic resonance in congenital heart disease, vascular imaging of the arterial wall and magnetic resonance angiography, imaging for interventional procedures and assessment of pulmonary arterial hypertension, quantitative blood flow measurements, flow visualization and wall stress/strain analysis.
Dr Rakesh Sharma: evaluating new treatments for heart failure and atrial fibrillation, understanding the role of the hibernating myocardium and revascularisation in heart failure.
Professor Richard Underwood : nuclear cardiology of viable and hibernating myocardium in heart failure, pharmacological stress.
Professor Roxy Senior: development and evaluation of echocardiography techniques and in its application to cardiac syndromes.
Professor Sabine Ernst: catheter ablation studies of complex arrhythmias particularly atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia, the development and use of magnetic navigation techniques for understanding aetiology and treatment of cardiac disease.
Professor Sanjay Prasad: the role of genetics in predicting and treating heart failure and cardiomyopathy, magnetic resonance imaging of cardiomyopathy.
Professor Susanna Price: cardiogenic shock, mechanical cardiac support.
Professor Thomas Luscher: vascular disease, coagulation in ageing, hypertension, the role of endothelium-derived mediators in the regulation of vascular tone and structure, platelet-vessel wall interactions, lipid disorders, atherosclerosis, inflammation, heart disease, acute coronary syndromes.
Dr Tom Wong: interventional treatment of complex cardiac arrhythmia especially atrial fibrillation and arrhythmia in patients with heart failure and congenital heart disease.
Dr Vasileios Panoulas: mechanical cardiac support, cardiogenic shock.
Dr Vias Markides: clinical trials of novel therapies and devices in arrhythmia, electrophysiological approaches and the ablation of complex particularly atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia.
Dr Alexandra Rice: general thoracic pathology, particularly lung, pleura and mediastinum, lung and heart transplantation pathology.
Professor Andrew Bush, Dr Sejal Saglani and Dr Mark Rosenthal: paediatric respiratory medicine, invasive and non-invasive assessment of airway inflammation and structural airway wall changes in asthma, cystic fibrosis and other suppurative lung diseases, clinical respiratory physiology.
Professor Andrew Nicholson: all thoracic pathology particularly the lung, pleura and mediastinum, lung cancer and interstitial lung disease pathology.
Professor Anita Simonds: non-invasive ventilation in acute and chronic respiratory failure and neuromuscular diseases such as Duchene muscular dystrophy and spinal muscular atrophy, sleep disordered breathing in the elderly and in heart failure
Professor Athol Wells: the biology and epidemiology of diffuse/interstitial lung disease biology and associated pulmonary hypertension, the definition of diffuse lung disease type and severity in genetic and laboratory studies, prognostic evaluation in interstitial lung disease and the development and evaluation of new therapies.
Professor Claire Hogg: mechanisms and markers of airway inflammation in cystic fibrosis and primary ciliary dyskinesia.
Dr Elizabeth Renzoni: diffuse/interstitial lung disease biology, its aetiology and the role of inflammatory mediators
Professor Eric Alton: developing and evaluating gene therapy in the treatment of cystic fibrosis. Professor Alton co-ordinates the UK CF Gene Therapy Consortium
Mr Eric Lim: biology of lung cancer including genetics and resistance to chemotherapy, tumour profiling and biomarkers; clinical lung cancer research including surgical evaluations, clinical trials and meta-analyses.
Dr Ian Balfour-Lynn: cystic fibrosis and inflammatory lung disease; pre-school viral wheezing and the use of oxygen.
Dr Imogen Felton: investigating CF-maternal, reproductive and metabolic/endocrine health and impacts regarding clinical outcomes and patient-experience in CFTR modulator era.
Professor Jane Davies: gene and other novel therapies in cystic fibrosis, bronchoscopic techniques including airway wall biopsy and broncho-alveolar lavage in children.
Dr Joanna Szram: etiology and prevalence of occupational lung disease including asthma and COPD.
Professor Kian Fan Chung: treatments for severe asthma, cough and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, role of lung inflammation and scarring in asthma and chronic obstructive airways disease, environmental pollution in asthma and COPD.
Dr Margarita Burmester: development and evaluation of simulations and adult learning techniques primarily in paediatric intensive care into clinical practice.
Dr Martin Carby: improving outcomes from lung transplantation.
Dr Matthew Hind: stem and regenerative therapies for advanced lung diseases, cellular and molecular mechanisms of lung development and regeneration
Professor Michael Loebinger: investigating the susceptibility, progression and prognosis of chronic infective lung diseases with reference to both the host and microbe. New biomarker and clinical endpoint development. Bronchiectasis, cystic fibrosis, non tuberculous mycobacteria, tuberculosis, stem cells and immunology.
Professor Michael Polkey: diagnosis and treatment, the role of skeletal muscle dysfunction, pulmonary rehabilitation, lung reduction surgery and other related minimally invasive procedures, diaphragm physiology and pulmonary mechanics, respiratory disease related to neurological disease.
Professor Nicholas Hopkinson: interests in COPD include lung volume reduction, skeletal muscle impairment, exercise and physical activity as well as tobacco control.
Professor Nicholas Simmonds: CFTR modulator and other novel therapies in cystic fibrosis; CFTR functional tests and advanced diagnostics.
Dr Omar Usmani: inhaled drug delivery technologies, lung imaging and small airways physiology in asthma and COPD, cough pharmacology and the molecular biology of inhaled therapeutic drugs.
Professor Pallav Shah: the role of novel bronchoscopic treatments in airways diseases including devices to achieve bronchoscopic lung volume reduction and stents to create collateral airways, bronchial thermoplasty in moderate to severe asthma, early diagnosis and staging of lung cancer.
Dr Peter George: Investigating novel techniques and clinical endpoints for assessment of interstitial lung disease including artificial intelligence based evaluation of CT, epidemiological assessment of interstitial lung disease and pulmonary fibrosis, basic science and translational research including exploration of the interplay between the pulmonary vasculature and interstitial lung disease.
Dr Philip Molyneaux: basic and translational research into pulmonary fibrosis, biomarker discovery and development of new treatments for interstitial lung disease.
Dr Richard Hewitt: genomic approaches to elucidate early disease mechanisms in pulmonary fibrosis, translational studies in interstitial lung abnormalities to develop early diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for ILD.
Mr Simon Jordan: surgical treatment of sarcoma and COPD; surgical metastasectomy.
Mr Vladimir Anikin: surgical outcomes and techniques in thoracic surgery and in pulmonary cryosurgery.
Professor William Man: chronic lung diseases, pulmonary rehabilitation, breathlessness, respiratory physiology, muscle physiology, frailty, Long Covid
Read more information about our research on thoracic surgery under active research studies.
Critical care
The clinicians focused on critical care research (who work with colleagues in paediatrics) are:
Dr Brijesh Patel: pathophysiology and basic mechanisms of organ injury and inflammation within critical care disease states, including the optimisation and improvement of translational disease models of critical illness
Read more information about our research in heart failure on our active research studies page.