Dr Simon W Jones PhD, BSc

Simon Jones

Institute of Inflammation and Ageing
Reader in Musculoskeletal Ageing

Contact details

Telephone
+44 (0)121 371 3224
Email
s.w.jones@bham.ac.uk
View my research portal
Address
Institute of Inflammation and Ageing
MRC-Versus Arthritis Centre
Queen Elizabeth Hospital
The University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham B15 2WB

Dr Jones is a Reader in Musculoskeletal Ageing within the Institute of Inflammation and Ageing. His research is focused on understanding the inflammatory and metabolic mechanisms that mediate joint and musculoskeletal pathological disorders including Osteoarthritis, Sarcopenia, Type II Diabetes and Scoliosis. He has a particular research focus on the role of non-coding RNAs (including miRNAs and long non coding RNAs) in mediating inflammatory responses and in understanding how obesity affects the pathology of diseased joint and musculoskeletal tissues.

Teaching

Dr Jones is Head of Education for the Institute of Inflammation and Ageing. He also teaches on the following modules and programmes.

Module Leader

  • MPharm, Health, Disease and Therapeutics 3.1

Lecturer

  • BMedSci, Biology of Ageing
  • BMedSci, Immunity and Inflammatory Disease
  • MBChB, Infection, Immunity and Haematology

Postgraduate supervision

Simon Jones's research interests include the inflammatory and metabolic mechanisms that drive osteoarthritis pathology, the role of skeletal muscle dysfunction and atrophy in chronic disease and understanding the functional role of non-coding RNAs in mediating inflammatory responses.

Dr Jones's current research projects include:

The functional role of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in mediating joint inflammation in osteoarthritis (in collaboration with Prof Mark Lindsay, University of Bath)
Adiposity and skeletal muscle growth and differentiation: understanding sarcopenic obesity (in collaboration with Dr Kostas Tsintzas, University of Nottingham)
Development and characterisation of novel biomimetic scaffolds for cartilage and bone repair (in collaboration with Prof Liam Grover, University of Birmingham)
The role of adipose-secreted cytokines in mediating osteoarthritis joint pathology

Other activities

Chief Investigator on several NIHR clinical studies

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Pandey, P, Yang, J-H, Tsitsipatis, D, Panda, A, Kim, K, Noh, JH, Munk, R, Nicholson, T, Hanniford, D, Argibay, D, Yang, X, Martindale, J, Chang, M-W, Jones, S, Hernando, E, De, S, Abdelmohsen, K & Gorospe, M 2020, 'CircSamd4 represses myogenic transcriptional activity of PUR proteins', Nucleic Acids Research. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa035

Anderson, J, Phelan, M, Rubino-Martinez, L, Fitzgerald, M, Jones, S, Clegg, P & Peffers, M 2020, 'Optimisation of synovial fluid collection and processing for NMR metabolomics and LC-MS/MS proteomics', Journal of Proteome Research, vol. 19, no. 7, pp. 2585–2597. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jproteome.0c00035

Nanus, D, Wijesinghe, S, Pearson, M, Hadjicharalambous, M, Rosser, A, Davis, E, Lindsay, M & Jones, S 2020, 'Regulation of the inflammatory synovial fibroblast phenotype by metastasis‐associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1 long noncoding RNA in obese patients with osteoarthritis', Arthritis and Rheumatology, vol. 72, no. 4, pp. 609-619. https://doi.org/10.1002/art.41158

Davies, O, Cox, S, Azoidis, I, McGuinness, A, Cooke, M, Heaney, LM, Davis, E, Jones, S & Grover, L 2019, 'Corrigendum: Osteoblast-derived vesicle protein content Is temporally regulated during osteogenesis: implications for regenerative therapies', Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, vol. 7, 392, pp. 1-2. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2019.00392

Mountcastle, SE, Allen, P, Mellors, BOL, Lawless, BM, Cooke, ME, Lavecchia, CE, Fell, NLA, Espino, DM, Jones, SW & Cox, SC 2019, 'Dynamic viscoelastic characterisation of human osteochondral tissue: understanding the effect of the cartilage-bone interface', BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, vol. 20, no. 1, 575, pp. 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12891-019-2959-4

Pearson, M, Philip, AM, Nicholson, T, Cooke, M, Grover, L, Newton Ede, M & Jones, S 2019, 'Evidence of intrinsic impairment of osteoblast phenotype at the curve apex in girls with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis', Spine Deformity, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 533-542. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jspd.2018.11.016, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jspd.2018.11.016

Murphy, D, Nicholson, T, Jones, S & O'Leary, M 2019, 'MyoCount: A software tool for the automated quantification of myotube surface area and nuclear fusion index [version 1; referees: 2 approved]', Wellcome Open Research, vol. 4, 6, pp. 6. https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.15055.1

Nanus, D, Wijesinghe, S, Pearson, M, Hadjicharalambous, M, Rosser, A, Davis, E, Lindsay, MA & Jones, S 2019, 'Obese osteoarthritis patients exhibit an inflammatory synovial fibroblast phenotype, which is regulated by the long non coding RNA MALAT1', Arthritis and Rheumatology, pp. 1-29. https://doi.org/10.1002/art.41158

Hurley, P, Alnajjar, FAQ, Wijesinghe, S, Nanus, D, Davis, E & Jones, S 2019, 'The combination of local infiltration analgesia reagents increases their detrimental effect on human hip OA patient osteoblast viability and function', Journal of Orthopaedics, vol. 16, no. 5, pp. 434-439. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jor.2019.06.014

Abstract

Nanus, D, Wijesinghe, S, Pearson, M, Hadjicharalambous, MR, Rosser, A, Davis, E, Lindsay, M & Jones, S 2020, 'Clinical Connections: regulation of the inflammatory synovial fibroblast phenotype by metastasis-associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1 long noncoding RNA in obese patients with osteoarthritis', Arthritis and Rheumatology, vol. 72, no. 4, pp. A16-A16. https://doi.org/10.1002/art.40957

Nanus, D, Badoume, A, Wijesinghe, S, Hurley, P, Davis, E, Lindsay, M & Jones, S 2020, 'Identification of synovial fibroblasts subsets associated with pain and progression of knee osteoarthritis by single cell sequencing', Osteoarthritis and Cartilage, vol. 28, no. S133.

Wijesinghe, S, Badoume, A, Nanus, D, Davis, E, Lindsay, M & Jones, S 2020, 'Obese synovial fibroblasts exhibit single cell subsets with specific pathological inflammatory functions in osteoarthritis patients', Osteoarthritis and Cartilage, vol. 28, no. S84.

Review article

Wijesinghe, S, Nicholson, T, Tsintzas, K & Jones, S 2020, 'Involvements of long noncoding RNAs in obesity‐associated inflammatory diseases', Obesity Reviews. https://doi.org/10.1111/obr.13156

Farah, H, Young, S, Mauro, C & Jones, S 2020, 'Metabolic dysfunction and inflammatory disease: The role of stromal fibroblasts', The FEBS journal.

Al-Tarrah, K, Jones, S, Moiemen, N & Lord, J 2019, 'Potential role of adipose tissue and its hormones in burns and critically ill patients', Burns. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.burns.2019.01.012

View all publications in research portal