Digestive Physiology and Nutrition Group

Our group focuses on digestive physiology and nutrition. We use animal models of digestive diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease.

Research interests

  • Gut-brain axis
  • Neuroimmune interactions
  • Inflammatory bowel disease
  • Gastroparesis
  • Stem cell therapies
  • Hirschsprung disease
  • G protein coupled receptors (GPCR) as drug targets
Techniques

  • Animal models of disease
  • High-resolution fluorescence microscopy
  • Electrophysiology
  • Stem cell biology

About our research

Our research programs include investigating:

  • the essential two-way communication between the gut and the brain
  • novel analogues of INSL5 as potential drug leads using modern solid phase peptide synthesis
  • pathways of neuroimmune interactions in the intestine, including vagal, sympathetic and enteric nervous system pathways
  • the prevention of complications of Hirschsprung disease through stem cell replacement of missing neurons.

Research team

Research team head

Team members

Research and technical staff

  • Madeleine Di Natale
  • Billie Hunne

Selected publications

  • Di Natale MR, Athavale ON, Wang X, Du P, Cheng LK, Liu Z and Furness JB (2023), ‘Functional and anatomical gastric regions and their relations to motility control’, Neurogastroenterology and Motility: The Official Journal of the European Gastrointestinal Motility Society, Mar 13:e14560, doi:10.1111/nmo.14560
  • Wang X, Cao J, Han K, Cho M, She Y, Scheven U, Avci R, Du P, Cheng LK, Natale MRD, Furness JB and Liu Z (2023), ‘Diffeomorphic surface modeling for MRI-based characterization of gastric anatomy and motility’, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, doi:10.1109/TBME.2023.3234509

Contact us

For more information about our group’s research you can contact us by submitting this form.

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