Ben Jones

Clinical Associate Professor, Group Leader

• Ben Jones is a clinical senior lecturer and group leader. After training as a doctor he did his PhD at Imperial College with Steve Bloom and Tricia Tan, focussing on the GLP-1 receptor biology. He made some of the early discoveries about the role of biased agonism as a way to improve the therapeutic targeting of the GLP-1R in pancreatic islets, and has continued to expand this work to GLP-1R in other systems, and to other metabolically relevant GPCRs.

Murray Polkinghorne

Postdoc

• Murray is originally from South Africa and joined the lab in 2024 after completing his DPhil (PhD) at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Prof Charalambos Antoniades and Prof Keith Channon. His previous experience includes an MPhil in Translational Biomedical Research at the University of Cambridge, an MBChB (MD) at the University of Cape Town, and a visiting research fellowship at the Mayo Clinic, USA. He is now investigating the receptor biology and molecular pharmacology of the GIP receptor to discover novel therapies for obesity and other metabolic diseases.

Paulo Saldanha

Postdoc

• Paulo is originally from Portugal where he did his undergraduate and master degrees in Biochemistry at University of Beira Interior, Covilhã. He was part of two Marie Curie ITN Networks under the supervision of Professor Romuald Mentaverri, Amiens, France and Professor Guillermo Zalba, Pamplona, Spain. In 2018 he joined the Hull York Medical School where he completed his PhD under the supervision of Dr Francisco Rivero and Dr Leonid Nikitenko. He has a strong background of molecular biology techniques and previous experiments with animal models. He joined Professor Steve Bloom and Dr Ben Jones laboratory to study the receptor biology of calcitonin and calcitonin-like receptor families in metabolic diseases.

Iona Davies

Postdoc

• After completing her undergraduate degree in Cells and Systems Biology at the University of Oxford, Iona joined Tricia Tan’s lab in 2020 to undergo a master’s degree in Clinical Research. Iona continued on in Prof Tan’s lab to begin her MRC Doctoral Training Partnership in 2021, co-supervised by Ben Jones, focussing on tissue specific GIPR signalling. 

Billy Baxter

Postdoc

• Billy joined the group in 2024 after completing his PhD in respiratory pharmacology at Imperial College London. He has a strong background in pharmacological characterisation and is currently investigating the biased pharmacology of receptors implicated in metabolic disease.

Carissa Wong

PhD Student

• Carissa first joined the lab in 2021 for her master’s degree in Clinical Research after completing her BSc in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Manchester. She briefly transitioned into industry, working for a Clinical Research Organisation after her master’s, before returning in 2024 for her PhD, focusing on the study of the pharmacology of anorectic gut hormone-derived treatments, including biased and combination therapies.

Olivier Cahn

PhD Student

• After finishing his undergraduate studies in Biological Sciences at the University of Leicester, and an MPhil in Basic and Translational Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, Olivier joined the Jones Lab in hopes to further our understanding of the effects of bias on GLP-1R agonist penetration, signalling and efficacy in the CNS.

Alex Turland

PhD Student

• Alex is looking into Peptide tyrosine tyrosine 3-36 (PYY 3-36) and its potential as an effective anti-obesity treatment. She will be exploring the concept of biased signalling within the neuropeptide Y (NPY) receptor family to discover new drug responses that could provide new therapeutic options. Her work includes characterising ligand-receptor interactions to improve mechanistic understanding and inform drug design. She is also investigating methods to improve the proteolytic stability of PYY 3-36, which is crucial for it's clinical use. 

Hanh Duyen Tran

PhD Student

• Following the completion of her undergraduate research assistant role in Reproductive Physiology at King’s College London and BSc in Biomedical Sciences at St. George’s University of London, Hanh Duyen joined the Jones Lab in 2024 to pursue her postgraduate doctoral studies at Imperial College London. Her research project involves the investigation of biased signalling at the glucacon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor in vitro and in vivo to delineate the molecular signatures that drive its therapeutic benefits.

Eunice Liew

PhD Student

• After obtaining her Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Sciences at University College London, and her role as a laboratory technician in Cambridge, Eunice joined the team as an RA to investigate biased agonism at the glucagon receptor (GCGR). She is now continuing as a PhD student, where her project focuses on elucidating the tissue-specific effects of biased agonism at the GCGR and GIPR. 

Mona Xia

PhD Student

• Mona joined Jones' lab as a Research Assistant after completing her BSc at Imperial College London, working on the functional impact of selected amylin receptor missense variants on cellular responses to AMYR-targeting drugs. She is now a PhD student in Professor Tricia Tan’s team, investigating the long-term effects of therapeutic interventions on metabolic profiles and the gut microbiome. 

Tom Brown

PhD Student

• Tom is a PhD student in the Jones Lab working on Motilin.

Joe Birch

PhD Student

• Joe is a PhD student in the Jones Lab working on Ghrelin.

Carmela Colabufo

PhD Student

• Carmela Colabufo is a PhD student in the Tissue and Organ Transplantation and Cellular Therapies programme at the University of Bari "Aldo Moro", Italy, based at the Biomedical Research Laboratory in Endocrinology, Andrology and Metabolic Diseases, under the supervision of Professor Francesco Giorgino. Her research investigates cardiovascular complications of type 2 diabetes, focusing on how anti-diabetic drugs targeting the GLP-1, GIP, and GCG receptors affect human cardiac progenitor cells (hCPCs) isolated from cardiac surgery patients. Aspart of her PhD, Carmela joined the laboratory of Professor Tan and Dr Jones at Imperial College London to study the expression, activation, and intracellular trafficking of these receptors in hCPCs, bringing together her work on cardiac progenitor cells with the group's expertise in receptor biology.

Shiqian Chen

2020-2024
Role: PhD student

Yiming Zuo

2023-2024
Role: MRes

Jun Pang

2023-2024
Role: MRes

Leyan Zhang

2023-2024
Role: MRes

Lin Qian

2023-2024
Role: MRes

Meixuan Wu

2023-2024
Role: MRes

Xun Xie

2023-2024
Role: MRes

Junyu Pan

2023-2024
Role: MRes