:focus(1098x374:1099x375))
Professor Jonathan Knowles (BIO66) is a trailblazer in biomedical science, with leadership roles at major institutions like Roche, Glaxo Wellcome, and Cancer Research UK, Genomics England and many others.
Known for his work in personalised medicine and global research collaborations, he’s now giving back to UEA by establishing the Jonathan Knowles Clinical Fellowship. This Fellowship focuses on significantly advancing our understanding of major diseases where we have made little progress over the last 50 years - for example dementia, depression, and some cancers - through innovative, and extremely cross-disciplinary research that challenges traditional thinking. These advances in understanding will lead to new effective approaches to tackle currently poorly treated serious diseases. Embodying UEA’s “Do Different” ethos, the Fellowship encourages researchers to challenge traditional thinking and explore bold, innovative approaches.
During a recent visit to UEA, Professor Knowles met with researchers at the Quadram Institute, toured the Clinical Research Facility, and explored cutting-edge prostate cancer research at the Bob Champion Cancer Research and Education Building. He also took the time to sit down with us to share his motivations, vision, and hopes for the Fellowship.
What inspired you to establish your Fellowship?
I’ve dedicated most of my life to improving human health by helping to create novel effective therapies and powerful new diagnostics, but one recurring challenge has been that many longstanding hypotheses about major diseases have turned out to be largely wrong, hindering progress in treatment.
For example, cancer was once seen purely as a disease of growth, but we now know that it is clearly linked to immune suppression often caused by the cancer itself. This has led to major breakthroughs in cancer treatment involving agents acting through immunotherapy pathways. In dementia, focusing on amyloid as the cause of Alzheimer's has yielded very limited benefits for patients despite the investment of many billions of pounds around the world. New research using AI analysis of large-scale population data around the world now suggests there are other key factors, like the herpes virus family, that seem to be more significant and are leading to new and effective types of treatment for some patients. The core issue is that in a number of areas, unproductive historical perspectives supported by siloed expertise have led to wasted time and resources.
I want to help shift the mindset of those working to understand human disease by fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration to ask and answer better questions. When thinking about how and where I could make the greatest impact, UEA - a place that shaped my early career - was the natural choice.
This Fellowship is my way of contributing to a more effective future for understanding and treating serious diseases where we have been unable to make progress.
Why did you choose UEA to host this fellowship?
While it’s been many years since I graduated - almost five decades! - my connection to UEA remains strong in spirit, even if most of my contemporaries have long retired. Over the years, I’ve occasionally dropped by campus. About 15 years ago, I visited UEA and had a number of thought-provoking conversations with two former vice-chancellors and Deans of Medicine. Those visits gave me a real sense of the potential within UEA’s Norwich Medical School and the broader biology disciplines present in Norwich - it struck me as a place full of promise that innovation always brings.
When the time came to decide where this Fellowship could make the greatest impact, UEA stood out to me for more than just my personal history. Its motto, Do Different, perfectly aligns with my vision of challenging conventional thinking and encouraging bold, fresh approaches. To inspire people to think differently, what better place than UEA, one that’s built its identity around that idea?
To inspire people to think differently, what better place than UEA, one that’s built its identity around that idea?
There seems to be a common theme of collaboration across your career. Do you think that interdisciplinary collaboration in particular plays an important role in achieving the Fellowship's goals?
Yes. If you look at where science has not led to progress in medical research, one problem is siloed thinking and technologies. In both academia and in medicine, you have siloed systems which of course are very important to maintain expertise and are needed, but if that’s all you have and you don’t partner with others in quite different domains, it’s impossible to make serious novel contributions to understanding and treating disease. I hope that this Fellowship will strongly support the interdisciplinary work which is needed to give us answers about the underlying causes of Parkinson’s, dementia, depression and other serious diseases not effectively treated today. Additionally, it is clear that, rather often, siloed perspectives and rigid systems both in academic funding and in publishing significantly constrain researchers to work only on accepted hypotheses of disease. UEA has to some extent managed to break through this with some excellent interdisciplinary organisations and institutes. I find that inspiring.
Have you thought about what you hope the long-term impact of the fellowship will be, especially in public health and medical research?
Yes, I have a few metrics in mind. Just to take an example, there's already evidence published last year in Wales from NHS data showing that people vaccinated for shingles have a reduced risk of dementia. Shingles, which is caused by Herpes simplex and other Herpes family members seems to play an important role in many patients with dementia. There is some data suggesting that recent Tetanus vaccination can protect against the progression of Parkinson’s disease. I hope that through broad collaborations between different expertise in Norwich and elsewhere, it will be possible to clearly identify the underlying causes of disease in patients and that this understanding will lead to better diagnosis and new treatments focussing the right treatment for each patient. This new understanding will also to lead to widespread use of existing treatments for a range of diseases for which these treatments are currently not indicated.
Do you have any final thoughts to share with our broader community, including potential fellowship recipients and supporters?
Yes, I’d say to take “Do Different” seriously. Think for yourself, don’t follow the herd, especially when they went down a blind alley years ago, and persuade others to think differently about today’s intractable questions.
If you're considering supporting UEA or want to learn more about how you can contribute to pioneering research, please do get in touch with a member of our team.
)
)