Dr Emma S Chambers, PhD

Profile

Emma Chambers graduated in Immunology with Study in from the University of Bristol in 2008, where she spent a year at UCB. She subsequently undertook an MSc and PhD at King’s Col-lege London in Immunology. Her Phd was under the supervision of Prof. Catherine Hawrylowicz investigating the in vitro and in vivo immunomodulatory properties of Vitamin D particularly in severe asthma. Following her PhD, Emma was awarded an MRC Centenary Fel-lowship to continue her work on the mechanisms of steroid resistant severe adult asthma. 

In March 2014 Emma was started as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Prof. Arne Akbar at University College London – where she investigated how cutaneous immunity changes with age. Emma’s project was a clinical study utilising either anti-inflammatory drug (p38-MAPKinase inhibitor; Chambers et al Nature Aging 2021) or Vitamin D (Chambers et al Immu-notherapy Advances 2021) to enhance immunity in older adults by blocking the phenomenon of inflammageing.

Emma was awarded a Bart’s Charity lectureship in April 2020 to join the Centre for Immunobi-ology at the Blizard Institute. The aim of her lab to understand how increasing ageing alters circulating and barrier immunity in health and disease. 

Emma is currently an early career British Society for Immunology Trustee.

Teaching

Postgraduate

Module Co-Lead: ICM7141 Cell and Molecular Basis of Regeneration, Regenerative Medicine MSc
Personal tutor and project supervisor: Regenerative Medicine MSc and Medical Microbiology MSc

Undergraduate

PBL Facilitator: Medicine

Research

Research Interests:

Life-expectancy is increasing in the western-world - unfortunately, increasing life-span does not coincide with increasing health-span, significantly impacting on quality of life. The effect of age on a ‘healthy’ adaptive immune response has been well studied and is termed immunosenes-cence – however there is a lack of understanding how ageing impacts upon mononuclear phagocytes. 

Interestingly, not all aspects of immunity decline with increasing age, as there is a state of sys-temic chronic low grade inflammation observed in older adults termed ‘inflamm-ageing’. In-flammageing is detrimental to a functioning immune response with reduced vaccine efficacy and increased frailty seen with increased inflammation. I have shown recently in older humans that blocking inflammation can enhance antigen-specific cutaneous immunity.

It is currently unknown the precise mechanisms of inflammageing development and also how inflammageing and the cells responsible impact upon barrier immunity in health and disease. The aim of the Chambers lab is to understand how inflammation and immunity changes with increasing age and in turn how this alters disease pathology in older adults.

I am always interested in hearing from bright, motivated scientists who are interested in joining the team.

Staff

Current:
Dr Justyna Sikora

Past:
Dr Weigang Cai

Publications

Key Publications

DA Jolliffe, G Vivaldi, ES Chambers, W Cai, W Li, SE Faustini, JM Gibbons, C Pade, AK Coussens, AG Richter, Á McKnight, AR Martineau. Vitamin D Supplementation Does Not Influence SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Efficacy or Immunogenicity: Sub-Studies Nested within the CORONAVIT Randomised Con-trolled Trial. Nutrients (2022) 14(18):3821 https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14183821 

ES Chambers, M Vukmanovic-Stejic, BB Shih, H Trahair, P Subramanian, OP Devine, J Glanville, D Gilroy, MHA Rustin, TC Freeman, NA Mabbott & AN Akbar. Recruitment of inflammatory monocytes by senescent fibroblasts inhibits antigen-specific tissue immunity during human aging. Nature Aging (2021) 1;101–113 https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-020-00010-6 
 
ES Chambers, M Vukmanovic-Stejic, CT Turner, BB Shih, H Trahair, G Pollara, E Tsaliki, M Rustin, TC Freeman, NA Mabbott, M Noursadeghi, AR Martineau, AN Akbar. Vitamin D3 replacement en-hances antigen-specific immunity in older adults. Immunotherapy Advances (2021) 1(1) Itaa008 https://doi.org/10.1093/immadv/ltaa008   

RPH De Maeyer, ES Chambers. The impact of ageing on monocytes and macrophages. Immunology Letters (2021) 230:1-10 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.imlet.2020.12.003 

Chambers ES, Akbar AN (2020). Can blocking inflammation enhance immunity during aging?. Jour-nal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology vol. 145, (5) 1323-1331.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaci.2020.03.016

All Publications