ProfessorRobert Snelgrove

Rob Snelgrove graduated from Imperial College London with a BSc in Biochemistry and an MRes in Biochemical Research. He subsequently took up a PhD within the group of Professor Tracy Hussell at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, Imperial College London, where the focus of his studies was broadly to investigate the potential to manipulate myeloid cells to modulate immune protection and immunopathology in the context of respiratory infections.

Upon completion of his PhD, Rob was awarded the inaugural Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Wellcome Trust. The majority of his fellowship was spent within the laboratory of Professor J. Edwin Blalock at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), investigating the role of bioactive fragments of the extracellular matrix (termed “matrikines”) in driving neutrophil recruitment during respiratory viral infection.

In 2011, Rob returned to the UK and joined the Inflammation, Repair and Development section the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI) at Imperial College as a Research Fellow and was awarded a Career Development Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust to develop an independent research group. In 2016, he was promoted to Senior Research Fellow and was awarded a Value in People Award from the Wellcome Trust. In 2018, Rob was awarded a Senior Research Fellowship in Biomedical Science from the Wellcome Trust and was promoted to Reader in Respiratory Translational Science. In addition to extended research support from the Wellcome Trust, his group have received additional funding through Asthma UK, the MRC, the Rosetrees Trust, Apollo Therapeutics and industrial collaborative awards.

Broadly, Rob’s group are interested in pathways that drive inflammation and remodelling during respiratory infection and in chronic lung disease. Whilst inflammation is important in fighting infection, it must be tightly regulated and appropriate reparative processes instigated. Persistent inflammation and aberrant repair and remodelling are cardinal features of chronic lung diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cystic fibrosis and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. His approach is to understand fundamental biological pathways that are critical in regulating inflammation and repair within the lung, and subsequently define how and why these pathways are subverted or perturbed leading to the chronic inflammation and pathological tissue remodelling seen in these chronic diseases. To dissect these pathways, Rob’s team use complex animal models, primary human cells and patient samples from numerous clinical collaborators.