Professor Stephen Charnock-Jones

I am currently Professor of Reproductive Biology in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Cambridge.  Although I have worked in a clinical department for many years, I have sought to apply the techniques of modern cell and molecular biology to important questions in reproduction.  This stems from my early training in microbiology (BSc at the University of London) and my PhD (Cambridge University).  I was a post-doc with Sydney Brenner at the MRC Centre in Cambridge working on sequencing methods in the early days of the human genome project.  I then moved to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Cambridge although I worked for four summers at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Maine cloning hormone responsive genes in marine species.   

I have focused on using molecular techniques in the endometrium and placenta and this led to the identification of a splice variant of VEGFR1 (soluble FLT1) in the human placenta.   

It is important to understand the causes of placental dysfunction and with a long-term colleague (Prof Graham Burton) we identified the role and consequences of endoplasmic reticulum stress (ER stress) in the placenta which.  This work in continuing and I use in vivo models to investigate the underlying mechanisms that regulate this. 

Other current work focuses on understanding placental function with a clear goal of applying this fundamental knowledge to improving pregnancy outcome.  I co-lead (with Prof Gordon Smith) the Pregnancy Outcome Prediction Studies (POPS and POPS2).  As part of this work we have used a range of omic technologies to describe the landscape of coding, non-coding and short RNAs in the placenta (Nature Communications, 2021); characterise somatic mutation in the placenta (Nature, 2021), identify maternal metabolites that predict fetal growth (Nature Med, 2020) and define the (absent) placental microbiome (Nature, 2019).

Project/study information 

POPS, POPS2, Wellcome Leap - all aiming to identify predictors and interventions to reduce adverse pregnancy outcome 

Effect of misglycosylated placental protein and their effect on maternal adaptation to pregnancy.