Summary
Dr Brijesh Patel graduated with distinction honours from University College London Medical School where he was also awarded the Sir Edward Meyerstein Foundation Scholarship. He trained in general internal medicine at the former Royal Postgraduate Medical School (Hammersmith Hospital) and subsequently pursued clinical training in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine.
He was appointed as one of the first NIHR Academic Clinical Fellows within the Imperial College London. He successfully attained a prestigious Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Training Fellowship to undertake a PhD investigating the roles for tumour necrosis factor (TNF) signalling in experimental acute lung injury. He discovered that TNF-signalling triggers alveolar epithelial dysfunction in experimental lung injury through activation of death signalling. He held the prestigious Gold Medal for Research from the Intensive Care Society (UK) in 2011/12 for this research and was also awarded international awards for his research.
He was awarded a post-doctoral NIHR Clinical Lecturer fellowship at Imperial College London when he investigated necroptosis and other cell death pathways in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and branched into more translational science examining mechanicms underpinning the most severe ARDS supported by extracoorporeal life support. During this time he obtained funding from Academy of Medical Sciences (UK), the National Institute of Academic Anaesthesia, the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine and the European Commision Horizon 2020 Fast Track to Innovation track (ECMO BIOMARKER).
He was heavily involved in the COVID-19 pandemic and led through the Imperial AHSC and other international initiatives programmes which led to a better understand the disease and develop new treatments. Indeed, his group was one of the first to describe the immunothrombotic nature of COVID-19 and remains a pivotal finding during the pandemic (American Thoracic Society; Sunday Telegraph).
He is currently clinical director for critical care and extracorporeal life support (ECLS) services at the Royal Brompton Hospital. He also leads the critical care research programme.
His current research focuses on the pathophysiology and inflammatory mechanisms involved in the progression and pathobiology of severe cardiac and respiratory failure in patients supported on extracorporeal devices. Specifically, his laboratory uses translational models of critical illness to investigate how cell death propagates immunothrombosis within ARDS, cardiogenic shock, and sepsis. He is chief investigator of several studies examining personalised mechanical ventilation during weaning and during the application of ECLS for ARDS.
Publications
Journals
Wu Z, Spencer LG, Banya W, et al., 2024, Morphine for treatment of cough in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (PACIFY COUGH): a prospective, multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, two-way crossover trial, The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, Vol:12, ISSN:2213-2600, Pages:273-280
Brightling CE, Evans RA, Singapuri A, et al., 2023, Long COVID research: an update from the PHOSP-COVID Scientific Summit., Lancet Respir Med, Vol:11, Pages:e93-e94
Toal CM, Fowler AJ, Patel BV, et al., 2023, Hypoxemia trajectory of non-COVID-19 acute respiratory distress syndrome patients. An observational study focusing on hypoxemia resolver status, Critical Care Explorations, Vol:5, ISSN:2639-8028
Paul N, Grunow JJ, Rosenthal M, et al., 2023, Enhancing European Management of Analgesia, Sedation, and Delirium: A Multinational, Prospective, Interventional Before-After Trial, Neurocritical Care, ISSN:1541-6933
Kanai M, Andrews SJ, Cordioli M, et al., 2023, A second update on mapping the human genetic architecture of COVID-19, Nature, Vol:621, ISSN:0028-0836, Pages:E7-E26