Personal Statement
Anne is a physiologist/biochemist working on skeletal muscle disorders including the development of sarcopenia during ageing as well as changes in muscle in ME/CFS and more recently in MND. Anne’s work focuses on the role of inflammation on the development of muscle weakness, the responses of muscle to exercise and how this is modified, particularly during ageing. Recent work shows that denervation regulates degenerative pathways in skeletal muscle through changes in mitochondrial signalling, leading to the poor responses to stresses such as exercise and increased production of pro-inflammatory cytokines by muscle. Further work focusses on potential interventions to preserve muscle including nutritional-based interventions.
Anne is Co-PI of the MicroAge missions. MicroAge I was a successful UK national mission designed to study the effect of microgravity on muscle on the International Space Station (ISS) and the team has other ISS missions in preparation. Data from MicroAge I supports the theory that microgravity provides an accelerated ageing muscle phenotype and provides a platform to test interventions to preserve muscle mass in space and during ageing on earth, the focus of MicroAge II.
Anne has substantial research links with the University of Michigan and Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation funded through US National Institute on Aging (NIH) and Garden city University, Bangalore. Current research funding comes from the MRC, BBSRC and UK Space Agency.

Research Overview