Profile
Dr Alex Clark is a Senior Lecturer in Neuroscience. He undertook a PhD at University College London where he established a novel microfluidic culture platform to study the excitability of axons in isolation. In 2012, he joined Prof. David Bennett’s lab at University of Oxford as a post-doc where he studied inherited pain conditions using induced pluripotent stem cells. He became an independent Research Fellow in 2019, and focused on understanding the pathophysiology of Hereditary Sensory Neuropathy type 1. In 2022 he joined Queen Mary as a Lecturer in Neuroscience, and in 2024 was promoted to Senior Lecturer.
LinkedIn profile
Teaching
ICMM930 – Chronic Pain and Epilepsy – Module lead
BMD361 – Repair and Regeneration in the Nervous System - Module lead
SNU307 – Developmental Biology and Cell Signaling - Module lead
Research
Research Interests:
Pain arises as a direct consequence of injury or disease to the somatosensory system. There are many causes of pain and sometimes this results in neuropathic pain which can last many months to years or even a whole lifetime. I am particularly interested in researching inherited pain conditions; these are often highly debilitating and have a profound impact on the quality of life. I specialise in differentiating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to sensory neurons to model and study these conditions. These are a fantastic opportunity to study human neurons in culture and by doing so we can interrogate potential disease mechanisms. I have been successful in developing the first ever myelinating coculture of human iPSC-derived neurons with rodent Schwann cells which we used to study a demyelinating neuropathy. This coculture platform is now being used as a diagnostic screening tool. More recently I led a large investigative project to study the pathophysiology of Hereditary Sensory Neuropathy type 1, where we uncovered a previously unknown cause for this disease. iPSCs are an incredibly powerful tool for researchers to study disease and it is my intention to use both iPSC and in vivo models to continue researching painful conditions.
Supervision
Postdoctoral researchers
Dr Wilson is working to uncover the cellular and molecular mechanisms that lead to painful diabetic neuropathy. She is using iPSC-derived neuronal models to study this debilitating disease. She has previously worked on modelling human genetic obesity by using iPSC-derived hypothalamic neuronal models. This included reprogramming somatic cells from Prader-Willi patients (the most prevalent obesity syndrome) and de novo crispr-cas9 genome editing of hESCs.
PhD students
- Kira Werder – Joint primary supervisor
