Dr Simon Biddie

Simon Biddie is a Clinical Lecturer and Specialty Registrar in Intensive Care Medicine.

Dr Simon Biddie

Clinical Lecturer and Specialty Registrar in Intensive Care Medicine

• Anaesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine
• Usher Institute
• College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine

Contact details

• Email: Simon.Biddie@ed.ac.uk

Address

Street

Chancellor's Building
49 Little France Crescent

City

Edinburgh

Post Code

EH16 4SB

Background

Simon graduated from the University of Bristol with a MBChB (2012), PhD (2010) and an intercalated BSc (Hons) in neuroscience (2006). He conducted his PhD, integrated into his clinical training, at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH).

His work, on the interaction of inducible transcription factors with chromatin, uncovered key mechanisms of chromatin in the cell-specific regulation of the glucocorticoid receptor. Following completion of his degree in medicine, he joined the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as an affiliate post-doctoral fellow. To continue his medical training, he undertook the academic foundation programme at Addenbrooke’s hospital and joined the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research. He subsequently completed core training in anaesthesia at the East of England deanery.

Simon moved to the University of Edinburgh to undertake specialty training in intensive care medicine as a SCREDS clinical lecturer. He joined the laboratory of Wendy Bickmore at the MRC Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine (IGMM), and is currently appointed as a NES/CSO clinical lecturer.

https://www.ed.ac.uk/mrc-human-genetics-unit/research/simon-biddie-research-group-affiliate

Research

Summary

Simon’s research interests involves understanding the regulation of gene transcription in response to inflammation in the lung, using genomic approaches to uncover interactions between transcription factor and chromatin structure in response to bacterial and viral infections.

Enhancer Regulation in Lung Inflammation

In response to inflammatory stimuli, structural cells such as epithelial and endothelial cells produce responses that have both anti-inflammatory and pro-inflammatory properties. These responses are regulated at the level of chromatin through engagement of enhancers, often in a cell-specific manner. Using genomic approaches to study transcriptional changes and dynamics of chromatin structure, the contribution of transcription factors and genetic variants to transcription outcomes will uncover understading roles of enhancers in lung inflammation to guide novel therapeutic development, and decipher the functional consequence of genetic variation in disease susceptibility and severity.

Cellular Differentiation and Recovery in Lung Injury

Following lung injury from bacterial and viral insults, cellular repair mechanism promote advantageous states, but also deleterious environments that have acute and long-term health consequences. Using model systems of lung injury, combined with single-cell and lineage-tracing approaches, the mechanisms of cellular responses to acute injury and the ensuing recovery aims to identify signalling pathways amenable to intervention to reduce the deleterious impact of lung injury.