Christopher.townley@ouh.nhs.uk

Research Summary

My research aim is to gain a better understanding of the response of the nervous system to injury in order to develop strategies to promote peripheral nerve repair and to prevent the development of neuropathic pain. This is complementary to my clinical interest in peripheral neuropathy and pain management. 

I administer a specialist neuropathy and channelopathy clinical service at the Oxford University Hospitals Foundation Trust. I employ a multi-disciplinary approach including electrophysiology, cell culture, preclinical transgenic models and transcriptional profiling as well as biomarker, psychophysical and genetic studies in patients.

This research programme is leading to a better understanding of the signaling events which lead to neuropathic pain, improved means of patient stratification and led to new drug targets which are undergoing clinical trials.

I have been involved in understanding the genetic basis of inherited painful channelopathies (for instance familial episodic pain syndrome due to TRPA1 mutations as well as rare variants in Nav1.7) and in the description and validation of novel pain mediators such as NGF and CXCL5.

I led, the highly successful  DOLORIsk EU initiative and currently lead the PAINSTORM project which is part of the UK Advanced Pain Discovery Platform) aiming to better understand, track and ultimately manage neuropathic pain. I am a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and I was awarded an honorary Skou Professorship at the University of Aarhus in 2019.