Inflammation and chronic diseases

Inflammatory conditions and chronic diseases combine to create one of the biggest burdens on health worldwide.

Such conditions can affect people over the course of decades or even their whole lifetime posing complex and novel challenges. We apply our scientific expertise to discovering more about the causes, prevention and treatment of conditions such as heart disease, liver disease, metabolic conditions and arthritis.

Cardiovascular Diseases

We have world leading laboratory research programmes studying the biology and of platelets, white blood cells and endothelial cells and investigating the molecular basis of heart diseases such as atrial fibrillation. These programmes underpin strong translational research to develop and assess treatments for heart and vascular disease in both hospital and primary care settings.

Find out more about our Cardiovascular Sciences research

Inflammation and Ageing

Our partnership with the NHS brings basic scientists, clinicians and patients together to break down traditional bench to bedside divisions and allow an integrated, multidisciplinary, patient-centred approach to treating chronic inflammation and ageing. Laboratory studies of inflammation, tissue injury and scarring, and regeneration and repair are being used to develop new approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of arthritis, liver, renal and respiratory disease. Translation is accelerated through our outstanding infrastructure including the NIHR Biomedical Research Unit (BRU) in Liver Disease, the NIHR Clinical Research Facility and the Centre for Translational Inflammation research within the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

Find out more about our Inflammation and Ageing research

Metabolism and Systems

Metabolism is vital to life and when it goes wrong this leads to a wide range of diseases. We use a variety of metabolomics approaches to study normal physiology and a range of human diseases and ageing in both experimental medicine and large-scale studies. Our research is underpinned by state of the art technology platforms featuring a unique capability for integrated metabolome analysis in the Henry Wellcome NMR Facility and the MRC-funded Phenome Centre underpinned by bioinformatics expertise. Our research is allowing us to develop new diagnostic tests and treatments for range of metabolic and endocrine disorders.

Find out more about our Metabolism and Systems research

Real life impact 

Developing treatments for burns victims Researchers at the NIHR Surgical Reconstruction and Microbiology Research Centre (SRMRC) have developed a revolutionary wound dressing using the molecule Decorin which they hope will prevent scarring in injured tissue. The dressing will be tested on burns patients at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, in a three- year clinical trial.