WEHI Immunity special seminar hosted by Professor James Murphy

Matthias Friedrich, Dr. rer. biol. hum.

Group Leader, Translational Gastroenterology & Liver Unit (John Radcliffe Hospital); Principal Investigator (Wellcome Trust Career Development Award), Brasenose College Alumnus – University of Oxford, UK

The role of fibroblasts in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)

Davis Auditorium

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Including Q&A session

Please note this presentation will not be recorded

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) affects the gastrointestinal lining by chronic relapsing inflammation and fibrosis. There is no cure for IBD, and its prevalence continues to increase across diverse populations. Historically, therapeutic drug development has focused on leukocytes and their secreted products. In recent years, stromal cells including fibroblasts have gained increasing attention due to their signatures being strongly associated with poor outcome in IBD, such as the non-response to therapy and fibrosis leading to surgery. We have extensively studied transcriptional and epigenetic states of fibroblast in the context on therapy response and fibrosis in the gut, supporting their role as key players in the pathogenesis and chronicity of IBD. Insights from these studies could lead to novel therapies focussing on fibroblast depletion or phenotype modulation.

Dr Matthias Friedrich is a Group Leader and Principal Investigator at the Translational Gastroenterology and Liver Unit, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford. His research focuses on understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), with the aim of developing more effective, precision medications to treat inflammation and fibrosis. In inter-disciplinary team science, Matthias works closely with clinicians, patients, mathematicians and computational analysts to profile large patient cohorts with state-of-the-art digital pathology/AI approaches, spatial/single-cell/bulk genomics and proteomics/metabolomics. Discoveries are then followed-up by mechanistic in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo experimental models, as well as experimental medicine approaches together with industry partners and the NHS. Current projects aim to develop precision medicine approaches to medical therapy in IBD, finding better treatments for fibrosis in Crohn’s disease, and establishing a molecular basis for symptoms in ulcerative colitis. Matthias trained with Professor Dame Fiona Powrie and Professor Christopher Buckley at the University of Oxford, following his doctoral studies at LMU Munich under Prof Stephan Brand. Before that, Matthias completed his Master of Science in Biochemistry. He is an associate editor of Frontiers in Immunology and his work has been published in journals including Nature Medicine, Nature Immunology, Gastroenterology, Gut and Immunity. He is a Wellcome Trust Career Development Awardee, a previous NIHR Senior Research Fellow, and has worked on a number of industry fellowships for Roche, UCB and J&J. Matthias currently chairs the Oxford-AbbVie Immunology Network of postdoctoral fellowships.

All Welcome!