Dr. Anna Duckworth, an early-career researcher at the University of Exeter, has been invited to speak at the prestigious European Respiratory Society (ERS) Conference in Amsterdam this September. Her groundbreaking work on idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is gaining attention for its potential to transform patient outcomes. We spoke to Anna about her research, its impact, and what’s next for her team.
What breakthrough do you think will have the biggest impact? We did a clinical study called STARSHIP as part of my PhD and now that enough time has elapsed, following those patients has shown that those with lower blood concentrations of bioactive testosterone had considerably worse survival. On the one hand, dreadful for these patients and their families, and on the other an exciting research finding because it supports our pursuit of funding for a national treatment trial.
What could this mean for patients with respiratory conditions in the UK and beyond? It could mean better and more available treatment for 70,000 people in the UK who are living with pulmonary fibrosis and struggling to breathe as they try and go about their everyday life. And of course there are hundreds of thousands of such patients worldwide.
What are the potential clinical implications of this work? You mentioned hopes for a clinical trial. What stage are you at, and what would the next steps look like? So, potentially we could treat a fatal and so far incurable lung disease that affects thousands of people in the UK and currently costs the NHS an estimated £2bn per year, with low-cost, readily available hormone supplementation.
Why is this research timely or important for the respiratory health community? Pulmonary fibrosis is behind 1% of UK deaths and there is currently an unmet need for a cost-effective and well-tolerated treatment that would allow these patients to survive longer and live more of a normal life.
Do you collaborate with patients or the public in shaping your research focus? Yes, that’s actually key for me – I run a patient research group called EPIC full of amazing people – Exeter Patients in Collaboration for PF research. Our patients and their families are the heroes in all this and it’s vital that we deliver what they want from our research.
What inspired you to pursue research in this field? I actually lost my Mum and my Grandad to this disease. Both of them were so brave, selfless and inspiring. I know what it’s like to lose someone before their time to pulmonary fibrosis.
Your work with Professor Chris Scotton has gained attention – can you tell us more about your collaboration and what sparked it? Chris and I work well together – he was my PhD supervisor and I think we have very complementary skills. He has a vast knowledge and experience and I bring novel ideas and hypotheses from left-field, which makes it a really effective combination to drive forward my mission to help patients and their families.
How does your research align with the mission of the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre? The mission of the BRC is to translate scientific discoveries into patient benefits and it’s good to be able to look back on this work, which started out as delving into big data on a university laptop and could end up giving patients much better and longer lives. Being fully integrated with the clinical team at the The Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has really enabled this translation.
What’s next for you and your team after the ERS presentation? More, more, more research! We need to continue to win funding so we can do the clinical trials that will make these treatments available and genetics research to show who’s at high risk so we can ideally prevent it. To me, funding this study should be a no-brainer because it’s going to save the NHS a fortune if it works – we’re on the right track and we need to promote that message!
Are there any opportunities for students or junior researchers to get involved in your work? Yes, definitely! We’re doing lots of exciting research across the whole of the translational path from lab work to clinical trials and the more people who get involved, the sooner we can make a lasting difference! Please get in touch if you feel inspired!
Can you give us a brief overview of your talk at the conference? The session is on sex differences in lung disease and I’ll give an example of the kinds of insights that can be gleaned when you consider each sex separately. Mainly though, I’ll be focusing on our work on causes of the lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis followed by our important findings that sex hormones (oestrogen and testosterone) seem to be protective.
Finally, congratulations on being an invited speaker! What does it mean to you to present at ERS 2025? Thanks – yes, it’s exciting, mainly because our research findings are pretty big news I think and it’s a chance to make a real difference by communicating them to an audience of respiratory experts.
A big thank you to Anna for taking the time out to talk to us and if you’d like to get invloved, please reach out to Anna at A.Duckworth@exeter.ac.uk.
The ERS Congress 2025 will take place from 27 September to 1 October at RAI Amsterdam – more details can be found here.
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