Professor Menna Clatworthy appointed Regius Professor of Medicine
The King has approved that Professor Menna Clatworthy, FRCP, PhD, FMedSci, Professor of Translational Immunology at the University of Cambridge, be appointed to the Regius Professorship of Medicine at the University of Oxford in succession to Professor Sir John Bell.
Professor Clatworthy will take up the Regius Professorship of Medicine in the Medical Sciences Division with effect from 1 March 2027 and will become a Fellow of Christ Church.
Professor Clatworthy is Professor of Translational Immunology at the University of Cambridge, former NIHR Research Professor and Honorary Consultant Nephrologist at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She is also Director of the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease (CITIID), Associate Faculty in Cellular Genetics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and a Fellow and previous Director of Studies in Clinical Medicine at Pembroke College, Cambridge.
Welcoming the appointment, The Very Revd Professor Sarah Foot FRHistS FSA, Dean of Christ Church, commented:
‘We are delighted to welcome Professor Clatworthy to Christ Church, and especially pleased to see her become the first woman to hold the Regius Professorship of Medicine. This is a significant milestone, and we very much look forward to her joining our academic community.’
‘We are delighted to welcome Professor Clatworthy to Christ Church, and especially pleased to see her become the first woman to hold the Regius Professorship of Medicine. This is a significant milestone, and we very much look forward to her joining our academic community.’
Her clinical and academic career has focused on immunology and nephrology, with research spanning fundamental immunology, experimental medicine and clinical research. She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales in 2020, and a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 2022, in recognition of her research excellence and achievements in the life sciences.
Known for her influential work in tissue and humoral immunity, Professor Clatworthy focuses on how tissue environments shape immune-cell function and how B-cell activation and antibody responses are regulated in organs including the kidney and gut.
Her work has identified an unanticipated link between immunity in the gut and the central nervous system (CNS), with direct trafficking of gut-primed B and T cells to the meninges and brain, changing the established dogma on how peripheral immune stimuli in the gastrointestinal tract may influence the CNS.
Her research combines in vitro and in vivo models with analysis of primary human tissues with single-cell and spatial genomic and transcriptomic technologies, and has contributed to understanding of immune responses in kidney disease, transplantation and infection. This includes the discovery of how the kidney microenvironment creates distinct zones of immune defence and the identification of therapeutically tractable, cell type-and tissue-specific targets in autoantibody-mediated diseases.
Professor Gavin Screaton, Head of the Medical Sciences Division at the University of Oxford, said:
"Menna is an outstanding clinician-scientist whose research has transformed our understanding of immune responses in human disease and has helped shape new approaches to treatment."
"Menna is an outstanding clinician-scientist whose research has transformed our understanding of immune responses in human disease and has helped shape new approaches to treatment."
Find out more about studying Medicine at Christ Church, including information about the course and life as a Medicine student, and watch our video introducing Medicine at Christ Church.
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