Welcome to the Anthony Group!
Welcome to the Anthony Group!
We established the Experimental Neuropathology Laboratory, an independent research laboratory, in 2000. The focus of the work of our laboratory is to identify how inflammation contributes to the outcome of acute and chronic brain injury or infection.
Inflammation, the response of the host to a variety of injuries, is usually desirable and beneficial. However, inflammation can be inappropriate or excessive, leading to tissue destruction. There is now considerable evidence to support the idea that inflammation contributes not only to the archetypal inflammatory disease of the brain, multiple sclerosis, but also to acute neurological diseases, such as stroke and head trauma, and to chronic neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, prion disease, and HIV-related dementia. For all of these neuropathologies, in which inflammation is undoubtedly an important factor, there is considerable debate as to how the host response contributes to outcome and at what time in the pathogenesis it is most important. Our results indicate that where inflammation contributes to the disease progression in neurodegenerative disease, it does so in a punctuate manner (on-off) as a result of systemic events that activate ‘primed’ microglia into a destructive phenotype. We now have evidence that this happens as a consequence of chemokine production by the liver as part of the acute phase response. Further information about the role of inflammation in the CNS and the interaction between brain pathology and the function of the immune system can be found in a recent set of reviews published in MCN.
Principal Investigator
Professor of Experimental Neuropathology
Daniel was a Glaxo graduate student in the Department of Surgery, University College London. Following the completion of his PhD in 1994 (UCL) he joined Professor Hugh Perry, then in Oxford, on a British Biotech fellowship investigating metalloproteinase expression in the CNS. During this period he also held a position as retained lecturer at Trinity College Oxford (1994-1998).
Daniel joined the Pharmacology Department at the University of Oxford as Associate Professor in 2004 from Southampton University (1998-2004). In 2015 he was awarded a personal Chair in Experimental Neuropathology. Daniel is also adjunct Professor of Neurobiology at SDU, Denmark and holds a chaire d’excellence at the University of Lille. The strategy he pursues combines state-of-the-art MRI and PET imaging with and molecular biology and immuno techniques to discover how inflammation contributes to CNS injury and disease.
Senior Postdoctoral Researcher
Fay graduated from Warwick University with a BSc in Mathematics before moving to the Department of Chemistry where she completed an MSc in Mathematical Biology and Biophysical Chemistry. Since completing her PhD in Analytical Chemical Biology, Fay has worked at Bruker (UK) and the Medical Research Council (Harwell) applying analytical chemistry techniques, with a focus on NMR spectroscopy, to a range of biological and medical research questions. Throughout her postdoctoral career, Fay’s research has focused on using a multidisciplinary combination of analytical chemistry, mathematics, and biology techniques to understand the chemistry of small molecule pathways associated with disease. In particular, Fay is interested in better understanding the chemical processes associated with inflammation in the brain with the aim of improving treatment of these diseases.
Fay joined the Department of Pharmacology at Oxford in October 2015. She leads several projects which aim to develop NMR metabolomics and multivariate statistical methods to better diagnose, monitor, and predict treatment response in inflammatory diseases of the central nervous system such as multiple sclerosis. In 2018, Fay was awarded a Junior Research Fellowship at Somerville College, Oxford.
DPhil Student
Prior to working in the Anthony lab, Daniel completed a Bachelor of Science, and Bachelor of Biomedical Science (Hons I) at the University of Queensland.
Daniel is interested in how maternal nutrition during pregnancy and breastfeeding affects offspring neurobiology and behaviour. He has already shown that F0 prebiotic feeding in mice during this period has anxiolytic- and antidepressant-like effects in the F1 generation, and alters NMDA receptor gene expression in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. By investigating changes in the gut microbiota and associated metabolites, he aims to uncover some of the biological mechanisms that underpin gut-brain axis communication, and by extension how nutrition during pregnancy shapes the CNS immune environment, and behaviour. He is affiliated with the Burnet lab in the Department of Psychiatry.
DPhil Student
+44(0)1865 281135
Daan is a licenced pharmacist from the Netherlands with a BSc and MSc in Pharmacy from the University of Utrecht. He has previously worked on drug delivery to the central nervous system using nanomedicine.
Daan's main interest is on the role of extracellular vesicles in ischaemic injury, specifically looking at the interplay between endothelial cells and immune cells. His aim is to gain a deeper insight into the pathology of ischaemic injury and to establish novel diagnostic markers using extracellular vesicles. He is also based in the John Radcliffe hospital West Wing in the Choudhury group.
DPhil Student
Before joining the lab as a DPhil student, Jaezah acquired an MSc in Pharmacology at St Cross college under the King’s Scholarship (Malaysia). Back in her MSc year (2017/18), she took the opportunity to undertake her research part in the Anthony lab, to explore the role of B cells during the acute phase response.
Jaezah is now a DPhil student whose work investigates the contribution of traumatic brain injury to Alzheimer’s disease progression. Currently a scholar at St Peter’s college, she obtained her funding under the Merdeka Scholarship by Khazanah-Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.
DPhil Student
+44 (0)1865 281135
More information can be found here soon.
DPhil Student
+44 (0)1865 281135
More information can be found here soon.
More details on our past laboratory members can be found here.
Tianrong Yeo - DPhil student
Dr Matt Evans - Postdoctoral Researcher
Ines Sa Pereira - DPhil student
Louise Lundberg - DPhil student
Kim Wals - DPhil student
Jay Roodselaar - DPhil student
Amelie Gavard - DPhil student
Christina Simoglou-Karali - DPhil student
Tatyana Strekalova - Visiting Fellow
Senior Research Fellow, Clinical &
Translational Advisor
Dr Bobojon Nazarov and Professor Daniel Anthony are currently working together in a cutting-edge research project seeking to evaluate the effectiveness of Nafamostat Mesilate (brand name: Futhan) in the treatment of COVID-19.
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