Dr Akhilesh Jha
MRC Clinician Scientist and Honorary Consultant in Respiratory Medicine
Email: aj580@cam.ac.uk
Twitter: @Akhilesh_Jha
LinkedIn: Akhilesh Jha
Biography
Akhilesh Jha is a Medical Research Council (MRC) Clinician Scientist and Honorary Consultant in DrRespiratory Medicine at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust where he also contributes to the East of England Severe Asthma Network. He has been a member of the British Thoracic Society’s Science and Research Committee and is an Early Career Editor for Immunotherapy Advances, as well as a previous Junior Editor for the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. He is passionate about engaging the next generation of clinical researchers and is founding chair of the Integrated Respiratory Research Collaborative (INSPIRE), supported by NIHR and Asthma + Lung UK.
He graduated from University College London (UCL) with a BSc in Molecular Medicine (2004) and an MBBS (2007). He completed specialist clinical training in Cambridge and London and has also worked in rural South Africa as a Medical Officer. He received a PhD from Imperial College London in 2018 where he developed novel human nasal challenge models to investigate innate immunity to viral infections in asthma, work for which he was awarded the Royal Society of Medicine’s Young Respiratory Investigator of the Year. He subsequently took up a Clinical Lectureship in Experimental Medicine at the University of Cambridge in 2019, which was followed by an MRC Clinician Scientist Fellowship in 2023.
Research Approach:
Our lungs are regularly exposed to viruses and pollutants and the mucosal lining of the lungs acts as a physical and immunological barrier against these inflammatory insults. People with airway diseases such as asthma are especially prone to experiencing excess inflammation in response to these triggers, which can lead to attacks and even hospitalisation.
Dr Jha’s research approach is to use translational human challenge models combined with cutting-edge single-cell transcriptomic techniques to investigate host innate immune responses and mechanisms of airway inflammation. The goal is to develop new approaches of treating acute flare-ups of chronic airway diseases
Current projects:
A £1.7 million MRC Clinician Scientist Fellowship over 5 years will allow Dr Jha to lead the research project “Mechanisms of Inflammatory Memory in the Respiratory Mucosa”. It will use innovative controlled human challenge exposures to viral compounds and air pollution in combination with cutting edge molecular biology tools to carefully investigate how the lungs respond to inflammation and aim to identify abnormal pathways in asthma.
The work will be performed within the HLRI and Clinical Research Facility in collaboration with expert investigators across the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, as well as through an exciting new partnership with the Air Pollution Lab in Vancouver, Canada.
The project aims to:
- Develop a novel human lower airway challenge model using Toll-like receptor (TLR) 7/8 agonist R848, a synthetic compound mimicking viral infections.
- Compare cellular transcription and activation between healthy and asthma volunteers.
- Investigate epigenetic changes and its functional consequence on inflammatory memory after R848 and air pollution exposure.
- Evaluate the potential for epigenetic modulation of inflammation using primary airway epithelial cell cultures at Air-Liquid Interface (ALI).
Selected Publications
1. A. Jha*, F. Chen, S. Mann, R. Shah, R. Abu-Youssef, H. Pavey, H. Lin-Jia-Qi, J. Cara, D. Cunningham, K. Fitzpatrick, C. Goh, R. Ma, S. Mookerjee, V. Nageshwaran, T. Old, C. Oxley, L. Jordon, M. Selvan, A. Wood, A. Ying, C. Zhang, D. Wozniak, I. Goodhart, F. Early, M. Fisk, J. Fuld, Physiological effects and subjective tolerability of prone positioning in COVID-19 and healthy hypoxic challenge. ERJ Open Res. 8, 00524–02021 (2022). *Corresponding author https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35136823/
2. S. Paterson, S. Kar, S. K. Ung, Z. Gardener, E. Bergstrom, S. Ascough, M. Kalyan, J. Zyla, J. Maertzdorf, H.-J. Mollenkopf, J. Weiner, A. Jozwik, H. Jarvis, A. Jha, B. P. Nicholson, T. Veldman, C. W. Woods, P. Mallia, O. M. Kon, S. H. E. Kaufmann, P. J. Openshaw, C. Chiu, Innate-like Gene Expression of Lung-Resident Memory CD8+ T Cells during Experimental Human Influenza: A Clinical Study. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 204, 826–841 (2021). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34256007/
3. A. Jha, R. S. Thwaites, T. Tunstall, O. M. Kon, R. J. Shattock, T. T. Hansel, P. J. M. Openshaw, Increased nasal mucosal interferon and CCL13 response to a TLR7/8 agonist in asthma and allergic rhinitis. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 147, 694-703.e12 (2021). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32717253/
4. A. Jha, J. Dunning, T. Tunstall, R. S. Thwaites, L. T. Hoang, O. M. Kon, M. C. Zambon, T. T. Hansel, P. J. Openshaw, Patterns of systemic and local inflammation in patients with asthma hospitalised with influenza. Eur Respir J. 54, 1900949 (2019). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31391224/
5. F. Progatzky*, A. Jha*, M. Wane, R. S. Thwaites, S. Makris, R. J. Shattock, C. Johansson, P. J. Openshaw, L. Bugeon, T. T. Hansel, M. J. Dallman, Induction of innate cytokine responses by respiratory mucosal challenge with R848 in zebrafish, mice, and humans. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 144, 342-345.e7 (2019). *Joint first authors https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31002833/
Research collaborators:
