We learned this week of the passing of a beloved member of the Solve community, Dr. Geraldine “Jo” Cambridge.
Dr. Cambridge was an emeritus professor of rheumatology and inflammation at the University College London (UK). She specialized in developing and improving therapies that target B cells, which are antibody-producing immune cells. In earlier work, Dr. Cambridge discovered biomarkers that predict which people with rheumatoid arthritis will respond to rituximab, a drug that lowers B-cell levels.
In 2016, Dr. Cambridge won a Ramsay Research Grant to study B cells in people with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). For her Ramsay Project—“Metabolic Analysis of B-cell Maturation in ME/CFS”—she studied how ME/CFS affects metabolism in B cells as they progress from immature cells into mature ones. She found that in people with ME/CFS, immature B cells express too much of a protein called CD24. These cells had less mitochondrial mass, used energy inefficiently, and more often succumbed to immunological attacks. Dr. Cambridge published that work in Frontiers in Immunology (see here and here). This work mattered to patients because it suggested that treatments that help immature B cells use energy efficiently and survive immunological attacks may help people with ME/CFS.
After receiving her Ramsay Grant, Dr. Cambridge won over $80,000 from ME Research UK to determine how antibody patterns predict ME/CFS–symptom severity.
Solve Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Sadie Whittaker, noted, “Jo was a brilliant and dedicated researcher whose work on the immune system helped advance our understanding of B-cell metabolism in those with ME/CFS. She was also a fierce advocate for postdocs under her tutelage and was committed to keeping new researchers in the field. We were pleased to be able to extend a Ramsay grant to her and her team to do just that.”
Read Dr. Cambridge’s obituary in The Guardian here.