Welcome to the homepage of Dr David Grainger's laboratory, based in the Department of Medicine, Cambridge University, UK We study mechanisms in chronic inflammatory diseases, with particular focus on coronary heart disease, using a broad array of cell biology and biochemistry techniques. Prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease is improving all the time. New drugs, such as the lipid lowering statins, are reducing rates of heart attack at an impressive rate. Unfortunately, it is difficult to identify the individuals who are most at risk, and therefore target the most aggressive treatments to these individuals.

A major strand of our research, therefore, is aimed at developing better diagnostic tests able to identify those individuals who will go on to have a heart attack. Our laboratory has pioneered the use of cutting-edge metabolomic and immunomic techniques in this area, with promising results. But diagnosing the disease is only part of the story: even with current best therapy many thousands of individuals will still have a heart attack each year.

New therapeutic options are clearly still required, and the second major strand of our work is to better understand inflammatory mechanisms in heart disease so that we can design new medications. Over the past decade, this has yielded a number of promising approaches, including TGF-beta elevating agents, broad-spectrum chemokine inhibitors and most recently apoE mimetic drugs. With the continued support of the British Heart Foundation, we will endeavour to bring these advances out of the laboratory and into the clinic.

GRAINGERLAB PROJECT AREAS

THE BIOLOGY OF TGF-BETA
CHEMOKINES & CHEMOKINE INHIBITORS
CLINICAL METABONOMICS
REGULATION OF MACROPHAGE POPULATION DYNAMICS