Professor Matthew Harper
Pharmacology of Thrombosis and Haemostasis
Fellow in Pharmacology, Jesus College
E-Mail: mth29 [at] cam.ac.uk
Tel: +44 1223 34032
Keywords
Thrombosis, Platelets, Cellular signalling, Cell death, Calcium, Necrosis, Phosphatidylserine exposure, 3Rs, Microparticles
Investigator Biography
Matthew read natural sciences at Cambridge and stayed to complete a PhD with Stewart Sage (Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience) on the regulation of calcium signalling in platelets. He moved to Alastair Poole’s group in Bristol to work on platelet granule secretion and thrombosis. Matthew is on the editorial board of the journals Platelets and Pharmacology Reviews and Perspectives, and was a founding trustee of The Platelet Society, a charity that promotes research and education about the roles of platelets in disease. In 2015 he was appointed to a lectureship in the Pharmacology Department. His current research focuses on understanding platelets in health and disease.
Matthew is a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, where he supervises second year medics and vets taking the Mechanisms of Drug Action (MoDA) course. He is also the Admissions Tutor for Sciences. Queries related to undergraduate admissions should be directed at Cambridge Admissions Office or the Jesus College Admissions Office.
Lab members
Holly Barnes - Ruby Baxter - Josh Broadfoot - Jo Dear - Haonan Liu - Chloe Mosonyl - Yuening Su
Key publications
Riddle RB, Jennbacken K, Hansson KM, Harper MT. Multicellular vessel-on-a-chip reveals context-dependent roles for platelets in inflammation and inflammatory hemostasis. Blood Vessels Thromb Haemost (in press)
Millington-Burgess SL, Harper MT (2022). Maintaining flippase activity in procoagulant platelets is a novel approach to reduce thrombin generation. J Thromb Haemost, In Press
Berry J, Peaudecerf FJ, Masters NA, Neeves KB, Goldstein RE, Harper MT (2021). An "occlusive thrombosis-on-a-chip" microfluidic device for investigating the effect of anti-thrombotic drugs. Lab Chip, 21, 4104-4117.
Abbasian N, Millington-Burgess SL, Chabra S, Malcor JD, Harper MT (2020). Supramaximal calcium signaling triggers procoagulant platelet formation. Blood Adv, 4, 154-164.
Millington-Burgess SL, Rahman T, Harper MT (2020). R5421 is not a selective inhibitor platelet scramblase activity. Br J Pharmacol, 117, 4007-4020.
Wei H, Malcor JM, Harper MT (2018). Lipid rafts are essential for release of phosphatidylserine-exposing extracellular vesicles from platelets. Sci Rep, 8, 9987.
If you are interested in our research, please contact Matthew. Prospective PhD students should consult the University's Postgraduate Admissions site, and in particular the postgraduate funding section. Post-doctoral research opportunities will be advertised by the Department and on the University Jobs page. Regretfully, the Harper lab is unable to provide any undergraduate summer placements in 2026.
Former lab members
Ms Clara Andiazabal (now PhD student, University of Cambridge)
Dr Jessica Berry
Dr Nima Abbasian (now Senior Scientist, Domainex)
Dr Bonita Apta (now Associate Principal Scientist, Lonza Biologics)
Ms Zoe Colucci (now PhD student, University of Cambridge)
Dr Jessica Davies (now Cambridge Graduate Medicine)
Mr Luc Francis (now King's College London)
Dr Roxanna Hajbabaie
Dr Ivelin Ivanov (now Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge)
Dr Dora Lopresto (now Director of Corporate Strategy and M&A, Grunenthal)
Dr Sarah Millington-Burgess (now Senior Teaching Associate, Department of Pharmacology)
Dr Rebecca Riddle (now Mestag Therapeutics)
Dr Alice Sowton (now MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit, University of Cambridge)
Dr Hao Wei (now Associate Editor, Wiley)
Ms Leila Uddin
Mr Venkat Vadlamani (now Murli Krishna Pharma, India)
Undergraduate members
Grace Atkinson - Lottie Arnold - Jasmine Bawa - Cameron Bicknell - James Brice - Shirom Chabra - Navjot Flora - Rebecca Gilchirst - Evonne Gaw - Oscar Gibson - Celine Goh - Lana Huang- Zhiyuan Lin - Wenxin Ma - Milena Malcharek - Keiran Smith - Georgia Tooth - Raina Xing - Jason Yang
Funding
Research in our lab is currently funded by: