Prof Paul Brenchley PhD

Research interests

Since 2009, my group has investigated the autoimmune mechanism causing membranous nephropathy, a rare glomerulopathy associated with heavy proteinuria and the most common cause of nephrotic syndrome in adults.

We have

• developed the first ELISA for quantitating circulating anti-PLA2R antibodies in patients
• linked levels of anti-PLA2R with the HLA DQA1 *05:01 DQB1 *02:01 allotype
• studied the role of anti-PLA2R levels in clinical management of patients over time
• identified the dominant epitope on PLA2R as a 31mer disulphide bonded structure
• identified A2t as a coreceptor for PLA2R on podocytes
• proposed a new structure for PLA2R based on single molecule EM
• developed an ELISA for the minor autoantigen THSD7A
• identified a common epitope structure shared by PLA2R and THSD7A
• contributed to the largest global GWAS in MN which confirms DQA1 and PLA2R as risk genes and identifies NfKB and IRF4 as additional risk genes for MN
• contributed to the first study of recurrent MN in transplants which identifies a donor specific HLA-D risk factor
• identified candidate T cell epitopes in PLA2R