Exeter Respiratory Research & Innovation (ERI)
Exeter Respiratory Research & Innovation (ERI)
Our team is made up of a number of individuals from across education, research and clinical practice, bringing together years of expertise with emerging ideas.
Click the boxes below to find out more about the members of our team:
Prof Gibbons graduated from the University of Glasgow with an intercalated BSc (Hons) (1st Class) in Molecular Biology in 1995, and MB ChB in 1998. He undertook his basic medical training in Glasgow before moving to Edinburgh in 2001 to train in Respiratory Medicine. He was awarded an MRC Clinical Research Training Fellowship in 2007 to study mechanisms in the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis. He completed his registrar training in 2010 and graduated with a PhD from the University of Edinburgh in the same year. He trained in interstitial lung disease (ILD) in Edinburgh and has also spent time at the national Jewish ILD Program in Denver. Prof Gibbons moved to Exeter in 2010 where he is currently the Clinical Director for the South West Peninsula ILD Service. Prof Gibbons has a local programme of research working closely with colleagues at the University of Exeter, he is Chief Investigator of the PETFIB Study, and he has developed a programme of tissue bio-banking locally. He is Principal Investigator for multiple clinical trials in ILD and IPF (Phase I-IV). Additionally, Dr Gibbons was previously the Associate Director of R&D at the RD&E, the Clinical Research Speciality Lead for Respiratory Disorders & Clinical Research Lead (Cluster 6) of the NIHR Clinical Research Network: South West Peninsula; he has recently been appointed Clinical Director. He is a member of the British Thoracic Society, the European Respiratory Society, the American Thoracic Society, the British Association for Lung Research.
Phil qualified in medicine from the Royal Free and University College London medical school before commencing his training as a physician. After achieving his Membership of the Royal College of Physicians, he worked in Intensive Care Medicine in New Zealand before returning to the UK to commence his specialist training in Respiratory Medicine. Having taken a break from training to undertake a PhD, Phil completed his specialist training in Respiratory and General Medicine. He now works as a Consultant at the Royal Devon & Exeter hospital and is an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer in the University of Exeter Medical School. His main areas of interest focus on chronic lung infections, particularly within the setting of bronchiectasis and cystic fibrosis.
Chris studied Natural Sciences in Cambridge before embarking on a PhD at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now Cancer Research UK) in London, working on ovarian cancer and the immune system. In 2004, after a postdoctoral sojourn in Milan working on innate immunity, Chris took a segue into lung research working with Prof Rachel Chambers and the late Prof Geoff Laurent at UCL Respiratory, with a focus on interstitial lung diseases, and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) in particular. Like many people, Chris had never before heard of IPF, but rapidly came to realise the true importance of working to understand this incurable disease – which currently accounts for >1% of all UK deaths. In 2014, Chris moved from his role as a Principal Research Fellow at UCL to take up a Senior Lectureship in Exeter, and he currently co-leads the Respiratory Medicine research group in the Department of Clinical & Biomedical Science, alongside his role as Departmental Director of Postgraduate Research. Chris is also passionate about helping support respiratory research in the UK. From 2017-2021 he was Chairperson of the British Association for Lung Research, and also sat on the science & research committees of the British Lung Foundation and the British Thoracic Society. He is currently a member of the research review panel at Action for Pulmonary Fibrosis, and is an Associate Editor of the leading respiratory journal, Thorax.
Owen is an Associate Lecturer in Biomedical Science at the University of Exeter Medical School. His research background is in exercise physiology, having obtain his PhD from the University of Exeter in 2018, winning the BASES Tom Reilly Prize for the best doctoral thesis in the UK. His research examines how we can use cardiopulmonary exercise testing for people with chronic lung disease to identify causes of poor exercise function, and to assess interventions. He is also interested in how exercise services are delivered in the NHS, identifying staffing, training, and logistical requirements to ensure optimal care for patients.
He holds many national and international roles, being co-chair of the UK Cystic Fibrosis & Exercise Network, Meeting Secretary for the British Association for Lung Research, committee member for the Association of Chartered Physiotherapists in Cystic Fibrosis and is a member of the European Cystic Fibrosis Exercise Working Group.
Xinpeng obtained his PhD in biomedical engineering at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. Previously, he worked as a research fellow at Karolinska Institute and the University of Plymouth studying peripheral nerve tissue injury and regeneration. He joined Dr Chris Scotton’s group in 2021. Currently, his research interests focus on the development of in vitro models using primary human lung fibroblasts and epithelial cells for drug screening to treat lung fibrosis. Promising drug candidates will be tested in vivo using lung cell type specific gene knockout mouse models. He is also interested in the analysis of human lung single cell RNA sequencing data sets in order to understand the heterogeneity of lung fibroblasts and the origin of fibrogenic fibroblasts in pulmonary fibrosis.
Karen is a research fellow based at the Exeter Medical school. She completed her PhD in Chemistry at Exeter University in 2004 which covered the Synthesis, electrochemistry and invitro evaluation of redox catalyst with therapeutic potential. After a time away from academia working in project management/delivery, she is now working with Prof. Matt Whiteman to characterise novel mitochondriotropic therapeutics in models of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Qualified as a Registered General Nurse at Bath School of Nursing in 1990. Since then, Sarah has lived and worked in Bath, Cornwall, South West London and Devon.
In 2008, in the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, Sarah has moved from Respiratory Research Nurse/CF database roles to an expanding Respiratory Nurse Specialist service, as they took on a newly formed Home Oxygen Service.
Over the following years she became a BLF nurse and developed the Exeter Pulmonary Fibrosis Group. Through these links and arrival of Dr Michael Gibbons in 2010, Sarah is proud that she can now give patients in the SW Peninsular a lot more hope and support.
She is the nurse member of the BTS Lung Disease Registry Steering Group and is a representative on the BLF South West Regional Forum.
By the time Jess completed her nurse training at King’s College, London, in 2000, she already knew that her future lay overseas. Eager to gain some skills that would be useful, she took her first job at the infectious disease unit in St Bartholomew’s Hospital, specialising in HIV/AIDS.
She then completed the Diploma in Tropical Nursing at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, before going on to work as a surgical nurse in The Gambia and post-war Sierra Leone. On her return, she began working in an Emergency Department, keen to fill a knowledge gap and gain more transferable skills. During her time there, she completed an MSc in Public Health, after which she spent a year in Botswana working on a community HIV/AIDS project with a small faith-based organisation.
Back in the UK, she continued to work in the Emergency Department, whilst also doing medical repatriation work. Jess then spent a further year in Africa, working as a clinic supervisor for Medecins Sans Frontieres in a rural HIV clinic in Zimbabwe. This involved collaborative working with the Ministry of Health as part of a project to decentralise care to more remote health facilities, with the goal of making medical care more accessible, whilst maintaining good standards.
Jess is currently combining work as a Clinical Research Nurse within the NHS with working as a Travel Health Nurse Specialist at an independent travel clinic in Exeter.
Giles is a Specialist Trainee in Respiratory Medicine. His research is investigating how we can predict and track the course of Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD). His interest in respiratory disease began at The University of Sheffield where he completed an undergraduate BMedSci at the MRC Centre for Developmental Biology; there he used novel imaging techniques to visualise neutrophil biology in a zebrafish model of inflammation. Subsequently, during his Academic Foundation Programme at the University of Bristol he worked at the Academic Respiratory Unit, investigating the role of pleural fluid procalcitonin and lymphocyte subset analysis in pleural effusions. His current work is a collaboration between Exeter, Bristol and Bath, using machine learning to analyse CT scans with a process called quantitative CT (qCT). He is collating a comprehensive anonymised database of patients with fibrosing ILD across the Southwest, including lung function, blood test and novel imaging data. He is also undertaking retrospective work to inform the design of a prospective clinical study where he will monitor disease progression over time using qCT scanning and compare this to more traditional methods of monitoring the disease, combined with a sub-study using novel specific radiolabelled ligands and markers of endothelial health to understand the driving mechanisms of disease progression.
Anna has a physics degree from Cambridge University and a PhD in laser spectroscopy from the Council of National Academic Awards. She worked in the nuclear power generation industry for many years, initially working as a Research Officer applying optical remote technologies to power station challenges, and subsequently working as Projects Manager, Programme Manager and Senior Manager within the UK technology division. She trained as an executive coach and ran a coaching and mentoring business part-time while bringing up her daughter. She is also a professional artist. Click here to see some of her work.
Anna has returned to scientific research in respiratory medicine (Chris Scotton’s team) to help find diagnostics and treatments for the devastating lung disease pulmonary fibrosis, which causes 1% of UK deaths and currently affects an estimated 70,000 people in the UK. She loves her research and also loves working with patients. She is passionate about building our understanding of this disease and helping to find a cure.
Dr Leonova completed her medical training at the Moscow State University of Medicine and Dentistry, specializing in cardiology and respiratory medicine. Her previous research focused on the investigation of risk factors and pathogenesis of heart failure and atrial fibrillation in patients with different lung diseases, including interstitial lung diseases (ILDs) and COPD, and also on markers of early diagnosis of different types of ILDs. From 2018-2021, Dr Leonova worked as a respiratory clinician in the Department of Interstitial Lung Diseases at the Central Tuberculosis Research Institute, where her research began to focus on ILD pathogenesis and the novel treatment options. She joined the University of Exeter in September 2021, to undertake a PhD funded by the MRC GW4 Doctoral Training Programme, under the supervision of Dr Chris Scotton, aiming to modify the function of immune cells in ILD, using novel drugs developed in Exeter by Prof Matt Whiteman.
Emily completed her Biological Sciences degree at the University of Exeter and investigated the role of a novel multikinase network in Burkholderia pseudomallei for her dissertation project. During her placement year in GlaxoSmithKline’s Immunology Research Unit, she developed her lab skills whilst optimising an in vitro co-culture model of the gastrointestinal tract. She then joined the University of Exeter’s MRC Centre for Medical Mycology in 2023 to begin her PhD entitled ‘Commensal fungi in the lung: innocent bystanders or pathogenic orchestrators of severe asthma?’ which is funded by the NIHR Exeter BRC. Under the supervision of Dr Peter Cook, Prof Chris Scotton and Prof Michael Gibbons, Emily hopes to identify the fungal and bacterial species which reside in the lungs of different patient groups before incorporating them into mechanistic experiments. Outside of the lab, she is a keen diver, hiker and surfer – always hoping to be outdoors!
Matt is currently a Clinical PhD Fellow at the MRC Centre for Medical Mycology within Peter Cook’s
group, co-supervised by Profs Scotton & Gibbons. His PhD aims to elicit how the fungus Aspergillus fumigatus drives airway inflammation, how innate immune cell responses are affected, and how the human epithelium regulates the process. His research aims to utilise patient airway samples to answer these questions, establishing a biobank of research samples for ongoing translational work in the South West.
He also has a keen in interest in Medical Education, with a postgraduate master’s degree in Clinical Education, and currently sits on the Council and the Science and Research Committee of the British Thoracic Society.
Leena is an undergraduate student in BSc Medical Sciences at the University of Exeter. She is currently on her Professional Training Year, working with Dr Chris Scotton at IBCS, looking at potential drug target innovations in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF). During the first years of her undergraduate studies, she developed an interest in cellular biology and molecular defects linked with various diseases. Placement year has further enhanced her interest in molecular biology, particularly cell biology of lung diseases such as IPF.
“I am grateful to be a part of Chris’s team and to be able to contribute to finding a cure to this disease.”
Howard Almond is a patient with IPF and since the confirmation of his diagnosis 7 years ago has been an active participant in patient advocacy and research. Howard has spoken at regional NIHR, and national conferences about the patient journey through clinical trials, also having an article published in The Lancet about his experience as a patient with IPF.
Howard is a Trustee of Action for Pulmonary Fibrosis.
Howard has been helping run PF support groups in Plymouth and Exeter, and since the pandemic has been running an ‘always available’ online support group for patients in the south west of England and beyond.
He is an active member of the PIME PPI group at the Exeter University Medical School and the PPI group at the Exeter Nursing Academy as well as patient advisor to the Exeter Respiratory Institute, and a member of EPIC.
Howard is a director of a number of international computer software companies and a regional environmental services company.
Anne-Marie’s research interests are in patient reported measures including patient centred outcomes (PCO’s) experience measures (PREMs) using patient-centred and mixed methodological approaches. Her special interest in interstitial lung diseases (ILDs) spans 15 years originating in the Dyspnea-12 study. Having been awarded a competitive NIHR CDRF in 2012, Anne-Marie completed a part time PhD at Imperial College developing and testing a patient-reported outcome measure for patients with IPF (IPF-PROM © Imperial College London). The 12-item IPF-PROM has been validated in UK, Europe and US IPF populations; it has been translated into Danish, German, Spanish and Portuguese and is incorporated into the ILD-Care Information Exchange electronic portal at Imperial College Healthcare Trust. As a NIHR 70@70 Senior Clinical researcher, Anne-Marie supported integrated clinical academic (ICA) pathways specifically for NMAHPs and particularly in primary care / general practice. In 2023, Anne-Marie took up the post of Jenny Jones Chair of Nursing Science at the University of Birmingham, but retains an honorary post in Exeter.
During the early pandemic, Patrick worked as a Digital Learning Developer for the Academy of Nursing and the wider College of Medicine and Health, with a view to improving and implementing online and blended approaches of education during the pandemic and going forwards. He worked part-time with the Exeter Respiratory Institute to facilitate the development of their online presence and the establishing of a Clinical Trials Accelerator Programme for Pulmonary Fibrosis.