Felix Clanchy

During his undergraduate studies, Felix undertook a research project to test a vaccine for Vibrio anguillarum in Oncorhynchus mykiss (rainbow trout).  After graduating with a double degree (B.Sc./LL.B.), Felix was awarded a scholarship to undertake an honours year (B.App.Sci.(Hons)) to study the effects of Beacon, a gene expressed in the hypothalamus which correlates with energy expenditure, on glucose uptake and gene expression in adipose cells.  Obesity potentiates type 2 diabetes and both conditions are forecast to increase in the future.  Although changes to diet cannot cure type 2 diabetes, it can help manage it.  This confirmed for Felix the need to research conditions for which no lifestyle intervention would be ameliorative.

Soon after, Felix began his Ph.D. at the University of Melbourne in the laboratory of Professor John A. Hamilton, investigating macrophage-lineage cells in inflammatory disease.  He was awarded a full CRC-CID Ph.D. scholarship to support his studies. He characterised a monocyte with increased proliferative potential and showed that these “proliferative monocytes” also had greater osteoclastic potential.  He also contributed to the determination of optimal conditions for the differentiation of human CD34⁺ haematopoietic stem cells to macrophages.

After completing his Ph.D. he was awarded a KIR Australasian Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Translational Research to undertake postdoctoral training at Imperial College London, at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology.  He moved with the institute to the University of Oxford.

While Felix's molecular pathways of interest include TLRs, MHC-II invariant chain (CD74) and the immunomodulatory molecules IRAK3 and IDO1, he has an ongoing interest in disease biomarkers, particularly as they relate to leucocyte phenotypes, that stratify patient disease status and response to treatment. 

His first sole author paper was the first published comparison of human FcER1a⁺ monocytes with canonical monocyte subsets.  More recently he has contributed to studies for new treatments for rheumatoid arthritis, including PDE4 inhibitors (Ibudilast) and demethylating drugs, as well as investigating novel methods for the detection of early relapse in sarcoma.