Rate My Professor Menna Clatworthy

Menna Clatworthy is Professor of Translational Immunology in the University of Cambridge Department of Medicine. She is Director of the Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease (CITIID), leads the Cambridge Tissue Immunity Laboratory in the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology's Molecular Immunity Unit, and holds an NIHR Research Professorship. Clatworthy is also an Honorary Consultant Nephrologist at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Fellow and Director of Studies in Clinical Medicine at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and Associate Faculty in Cellular Genetics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. A clinician-scientist, she divides her time between laboratory research and clinical management of kidney and kidney-pancreas transplant patients.

She read Medicine at Cardiff University, completed nephrology training in Cambridge, and earned a PhD from the University of Cambridge investigating antibody contributions to immune responses in autoimmunity and infection. She then pursued a Wellcome Trust post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in Washington DC. Her research elucidates tissue immunity across organs, using human samples and models with single-cell genomics and imaging to decode immune cell development, function, and interactions in health, disease, and ageing. Focus areas encompass kidney immunity in infection, autoimmunity (lupus nephritis, ANCA vasculitis), and transplant rejection; bladder immune-epithelial-fibroblast circuits; CNS border defences against infection; humoral immunity beyond antibodies; and COVID-19 responses. She contributes to the Human Cell Atlas, Kidney Cell Atlas, and CNS Border Cell Atlas. A Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci), she has authored over 160 papers, including highly cited works such as 'The human cell atlas' (eLife, 2017), 'Cross-tissue immune cell analysis reveals tissue-specific features in humans' (Science, 2022), 'Spatiotemporal immune zonation of the human kidney' (Science, 2019), and 'Gut-educated IgA plasma cells defend the meningeal venous sinuses' (Nature, 2020).