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portrait

portrait

Research groups

Infilration of a damaged nerve by Natural Killer cells.

© AJ Davies

Websites

  • Pain Killers

    Reporting in Cell, Davies et al. describe a role for natural killer (NK) cells in alleviating pain. Commentary in Nature Reviews Immunology.

  • UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship award

    Alex is one of eight Oxford University academics who have been awarded significant financial funding from the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships Scheme

  • How does your immune sytem make you feel?

    St John's Inspire Programme Lecture for Year 12 & 13 pupils. This video may contain content not authorized for use by its owner; the fair use of a copyrighted work for purposes such as teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. This material falls under the guidelines of fair use under Section 107 of the Copyright Act.

Funding

UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship Scheme (2022 - present)

Little Princess Trust - Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group (2022 - present)

Human Immune Discovery Initiative - NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (2020 - 2022)

Funders

UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship Scheme (2022 - present)
Little Princess Trust - Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group (2022 - present)

Alexander J. Davies

B.Sc. (Hons), Ph.D.

UKRI Future Leaders Fellow

Biography

Dr Davies’ research focuses on understanding the pathophysiology of nerve injury and neuropathic pain.

He completed his PhD training in neurophysiology with Professor R. Alan North at the University of Manchester. During postdoctoral training at Seoul National University in South Korea his work led to discoveries in spinal mechanisms of neuropathic pain and a clinically-relevant treatment for dental pain. Subsequently, as a NRF Junior Research Fellow, he led a team of international collaborators to reveal a novel immune mechanism of axon degeneration after peripheral nerve injury.

Since moving to the University of Oxford, he has developed methods to study human neuro-immune interactions in vitro, and currently leads several pilot studies phenotyping immune cell function in patients recovering from nerve injury.

Dr Davies was recently awarded a prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship in which he will investigate the mechanisms of cellular cytotoxicity in immune-mediated recovery from nerve injury. His long-term goals are to translate these biological discoveries into novel immune therapies for neuropathic pain.

Axonal targeting of sensory neurons by NK cells

Cytotoxic neuro-immune 'synapse' between NK cell and mouse DRG neuron results in axon degeneration (NK cells, green; Neuronal calcium signal, magenta).

Collaborators