Fellow

Professor Eric Alton holds the Chair of Respiratory Medicine and Gene Therapy at Imperial College. He is known for his pioneering research in respiratory medicine and is a leader in the field of cystic fibrosis gene therapy. His early work on the electrophysiological defect in cystic fibrosis led to the worldwide introduction of a diagnostic test based on measurement of nasal potential difference. He went on to demonstrate that the electrophysiological defect was absent from the lung following transplantation and developed novel techniques to assess ion transport in mice, this latter work led to the landmark identification of the cystic fibrosis phenotype in mutant mice. Having made these important diagnostic and mechanistic breakthroughs he moved to treatment and pioneered gene therapy for the treatment of cystic fibrosis and led the world’s first controlled trial of gene therapy. More recently he has identified a novel viral vector to improve transfection efficiency. He is now co-principal investigator and lead spokesperson for the UK CF Gene Therapy Consortium. This brings together some 50 researchers and an existing portfolio of grant funding supplemented by major new funding from the CF Trust and the Department of Health. However his research is not confined to the lung, nor to the use of gene therapy as a treatment - he has also developed a preclinical and clinical programme of cardiovascular gene and stem cell therapy, and a large stem cell trial for end-stage ischaemic heart disease has just begun. Eric Alton is a major figure in cystic fibrosis research and gene therapy and now in the emerging area of stem cell therapy.