Elizabeth Bradbury is Professor of Regenerative Medicine & Neuroplasticity, Group Leader of the Spinal Cord and Brain Repair Group, and co-Head of Wolfson SPaRC (Sensory Pain and Regeneration Centre) at King’s College London, U.K. Research in the Bradbury Lab spans two main themes: (1) Translational research focused on developing novel neuroprotective and neuroplasticity-promoting therapies for treating spinal cord and brain injury, focusing on advanced gene therapies, small molecule and pharmacological approaches and neurorehabilitation strategies for restoring upper limb and hand function; (2) Mechanistic Research into understanding injury and repair processes at the cell and molecular level, focusing on molecular mediators of cell death, neuroinflammation and tissue scarring; extracellular matrix and immune cell interactions; proteomics, biomarkers and drug discovery.
She completed her PhD training at King’s College London, where her research was focused on brain repair and neural transplantation, then as a post-doctoral fellow at St Thomas’ Hospital (in the labs of Stephen McMahon and John Priestley) she studied sensory systems and neurotrophic factors as neuroprotective and regenerative strategies for spinal cord injury (SCI).
In her second post-doctoral fellowship (with Stephen McMahon and James Fawcett), she focused on inhibitory factors in the extracellular matrix which prevent nerve regeneration after SCI. This led to seminal work demonstrating that degrading inhibitory matrix with the enzyme chondroitinase could restore limb function to paralysed rats (published in Nature 2020, with >2,500 citations).
She was then awarded a Career Development Award by the Medical Research Council (MRC) to transition to Group leader. In 2011 she was awarded a Senior Non-Clinical Fellowship by the MRC to continue with a programme of translational research aimed at developing novel therapies to promote tissue repair and restore function following SCI as well as mechanistic research into understanding injury and repair processes at the molecular level. She received the Schellenberg Prize for Research in 2008, awarded by the International Foundation for Research in Paraplegia for advances to the field and potential future impact for patients, and a Suffrage Science Award in 2018, awarded by MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences for leading female researchers.
She is a member of the CHASE-IT consortium (chondroitinase for injury therapy) who are developing and testing vector-based gene therapies for treating human SCI, and Consortium Lead for SCI-NET, a multidisciplinary programme to identify novel bioactive mediators of tissue scarring, inflammation and extracellular matrix remodelling.
She became full Professor in 2016. She has had two career breaks and worked on a part time basis during her Fellowships. She encourages a diverse and inclusive research culture in her lab and is actively involved in outreach, such as hosting regular spinal research supporters’ events and running an annual work experience programme for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
She has published >75 peer reviewed articles in leading journals (including Nature, Nature Communications, The Lancet Neurology, Brain, Nature Reviews Neuroscience), with >10,000 citations and H-index 50 (see @BradburyLab, Bradbury Publications, Bradbury LinkedIn, Bradbury Webpage).