Professor Greenwood trained in physiology at the Institute of Psychiatry, London, where his work focused on the structure and function of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) in health and disease. He then moved to the BBB group at King’s College London and after that was awarded the Renee Hock Fellowship at the Institute of Ophthalmology where he has remained. In 2000 he was appointed to the Davson Chair of Biomedical Research and between 2008 and 2016 was Head of the Department of Cell Biology. The main focus of the Greenwood laboratory is to investigate the role the vasculature plays in the onset and progression of diseases such as multiple sclerosis, uveitis, age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and cancer. The overarching aim of this work is to gain insight into the molecular mechanisms of the vasculature that contribute to the disease process, identify potential therapeutic targets, develop and test therapeutic strategies and eventually translate this into patient trials. His work on the role of the vasculature in inflammatory diseases of the central nervous system (CNS) has led to the identification and characterisation of endothelial cell mechanisms that facilitate the recruitment of leukocytes to the brain and retina. This work established the principle of outside-in signalling in CNS endothelial cells mediated through leukocyte engagement of endothelial cell adhesion molecules and the downstream effector mechanisms that support leucocyte transvascular migration. The other major focus of the Greenwood laboratory is to gain greater insight into the biological mechanisms underpinning vascular dysfunction. This work has resulted in the identification and characterisation of a novel vascular-disrupting factor and has led to the development of a therapy targeting this protein that will enter clinical trials in 2019. As principle investigator Greenwood has raised in excess of £30M in grant oncome and has published his work in high impact journals including Nature, the Lancet, Nature Neuroscience, Blood, Journal of Experimental Medicine and Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences USA.
