Hannah is an MRC Clinician Scientist and Honorary Consultant Physician. Here, she talks about her lab’s research into biological timing and asthma.

What does your lab research?

My lab is interested in biological timing in asthma. Symptoms, airway narrowing and inflammation are worse around 04:00. Why is asthma worse in the early morning?

We use molecular clock biology to understand why time of day is important in asthma. We hope that this will lead to new treatments for people with asthma or using existing treatments at a better time of day.

What are you working on at the moment?

My group is currently working on a wide variety of projects from using primary cells and in vivo models of asthma to clinical observational studies, drug trials and epidemiological studies.

In an ongoing clinical chronotherapy study, we are investigating whether time of day impacts how effective inhaled steroids are in asthma. This has provided access to round the clock human samples (including blood (serum, PBMCs, PAXgenes), sputum, breath).

We are currently using in vivo models of asthma (house dust mite and ovalbumin) and cell specific knock out of clock genes (using the Cre-Lox system) to investigate how molecular clocks in the lung, nervous system and immune system interact with one another in asthma.

In vivo physiological measurements of lung function can be measured using Dual Chamber Plethsymography and FlexiVent.

See a list of Hannah’s publications in Research Explorer.

Lab members

• Dr Amlan Chakraborty (PDRA)
• Karolina Krakowiak (Technician)
• Dr Ran Wang (PhD student and Specialist Respiratory Registrar)
• Jafar Cain (MBPhD student)

Read more about Hannah’s research in Research Explorer.

More about Hannah

• Twitter: @h_durrington
• ResearchGate
• ORCID
• Google Scholar

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