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The William Harvey Research Institute - Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry

Dr Rebecca Charles

Rebecca

BHF Intermediate Research Fellow

Centre: Clinical Pharmacology and Precision Medicine

Email: r.charles@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44(0) 20 7882 6865

Profile

Rebecca gained a BSc in Biochemistry from The University of Birmingham in 2002 before working at Unilever for 3 years, where she was involved in a variety of different skin ageing and skin health projects including a number of clinical trials. Rebecca then undertook her PhD studies within the School of Cardiovascular Medicine & Sciences at King’s College London. In 2017, Rebecca received a BHF Intermediate Fellowship to investigate activation of soluble Epoxide Hydrolase by intra-protein disulfide formation. In 2019, she moved to the William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London where her group studies the molecular basis of redox sensing and signalling in soluble epoxide hydrolase and its importance to the cardiovascular and pulmonary systems.

Research

Soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH) is ubiquitously expressed, including in cardiovascular-relevant tissues such as endothelial or vascular smooth muscle cells as well as cardiomyocytes, where it is an important modulator of arterial and cardiac functions. sEH is also a susceptibility factor for human heart failure, with polymorphisms that enhance hydrolase activity increasing cardiovascular risk. Conversely, inhibitors (or transgenic knock-outs) of sEH offer a broad spectrum of cardiovascular protection, including blockade of smooth muscle proliferation, reduction of atherosclerosis and hypertension, prevention and regression of cardiac hypertrophy and HF, and fibrosis. Until 2009, little was known about how sEH activity was regulated and it was thought to be principally determined by its expression abundance. However, it is now apparent that a number of different oxidative post-translational modifications regulate this hydrolase. My research focuses on defining and understanding the molecular basis of redox sensing and signalling in sEH and its importance to the cardiovascular and pulmonary systems.

Publications

Collaborators

Internal

  • Prof Philip Eaton (WHRI)
  • Dr Roberto Buccafusca (School of Physics and Chemical Sciences)
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