Matthew Wilcox

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT MATTHEW WILCOX

I was caught up in the Borough Market terrorist attacks in London 2017. I was struck by the psychological and physical effects severe trauma can have. This lived experience has stimulated me to pursue a career as an academic plastic and reconstructive surgeon focused on developing treatments which restore function to those who have suffered life changing traumatic injuries. I am an NHS Surgical Resident and Lead for Clinical Translational Research at the UCL Centre for Nerve Engineering. This involves working within a multidisciplinary team to address this issue with a particular interest in injuries to peripheral nerves (nerves that lie outside the brain and spinal cord); such injuries often lead to permanent loss of movement and pain within the segment of the body involved. A long list of treatments are known to improve recovery following nerve injury in the laboratory. But the benefits of these therapies have not yet been realised by patients. This is because we do not have the clinical tools to monitor the complex biological process of nerve regeneration.Our team has pioneered solutions to this issue through the identification of a unique clinical scenario of human nerve regeneration.I am Principal Investigator on several studies focused on developing improved blood and image based biomarkers for nerve injury and regeneration. This will encourage clinical testing of novel regenerative therapies so they may finally be translated into patient benefit. Critical steps towards have been made towards developing better imaging (MRI interrogation of muscle size and structure) and electrodiagnostic techniques to monitor nerve regeneration by this work. I am the youngest clinical academic to have received several national awards for our teams collective effort in this field. For any queries/collaborative requests please email: m••••••••@ucl.ac.uk