Professional background

Professor Brown is a clinician scientist with an interest in respiratory infection. He trained in medicine in London, graduating with honours, and continued his postgraduate medical training in respiratory medicine in a variety of London hospitals. He completed a PhD in molecular microbiology in 1999 and obtained a prestigious Wellcome Advanced Research Fellowship for further scientific training in the pathogenesis of respiratory infections at Imperial College and the University of Adelaide.

Professor Brown was appointed as a senior lecturer and honorary consultant at UCL and UCLH in 2003, since then he has led an internationally respected laboratory investigating the pathogenesis and prevention of pneumonia caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae. More recently he has initiated a research programme into the highly antibiotic resistant pneumonia pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii.

His clinical practice is in respiratory medicine, specifically in patients with lung infections, for whom he has established a new complex respiratory infection clinical service at UCLH. This service cares for around 500 patients with bronchiectasis and rarer complex lung infection problems, such as aspergillosis, as well as for inpatients and outpatients with respiratory complications of haematology disease.

He was promoted to professor in 2012, and is a member the editorial boards of several clinical and scientific journals, and joined the national Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation in 2018.

Research interests

Pneumonia, bronchiectasis, fungal lung disease

Publications

Professor Brown has published around 130 research articles, editorials, reviews and case reports in scientific or medical journals, and authored three books (including a textbook of respiratory medicine for medical students, Eureka Respiratory Medicine, that was shortlisted for the BMA Internal Medicine book of the year award 2016), as well as multiple chapters in a range of medical and scientific textbooks. Recent clinically relevant publications include the following:

  • Reglinski, M., Ercoli, G., Plumptre, C., Kay, E., Petersen, F. C., Paton, J. C., Wren, B.W., Brown, J. S. (2018). A recombinant conjugated pneumococcal vaccine that protects against murine infections with a similar efficacy to Prevnar-13. NPJ Vaccines, 3, 53. doi:10.1038/s41541-018-0090-4
  • Saleh, A. D., Kwok, B., Brown, J. S., & Hurst, J. R. (2017). Correlates and assessment of excess cardiovascular risk in bronchiectasis. The European Respiratory Journal, 50(5). doi:10.1183/13993003.01127-2017
  • Wilson, R., Cohen, J. M., Reglinski, M., Jose, R. J., Chan, W. Y., Marshall, H., . . . Brown, J. S. (2017). Naturally acquired human immunity to pneumococcus is dependent on antibody to protein antigens. PLoS Pathog, 13(1), e1006137. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1006137
  • Navaratnam, V., Millett, E. R., Hurst, J. R., Thomas, S. L., Smeeth, L., Hubbard, R. B., Brown, J. S., Quint, J. K. (2016). Bronchiectasis and the risk of cardiovascular disease: a population-based study. Thorax. doi:10.1136/thoraxjnl-2015-208188
  • Quint, J. K., Millett, E. R. C., Joshi, M., Navaratnam, V., Thomas, S. L., Hurst, J. R., . . . Brown, J. S. (2016). Changes in the incidence, prevalence and mortality of bronchiectasis in the UK from 2004 to 2013: a population-based cohort study. European Respiratory Journal, 47(1), 186-193. doi:10.1183/13993003.01033-2015
  • Wilkosz, S., Edwards, L. A., Bielsa, S., Hyams, C., Taylor, A., Davies, R. J. O., . . . Lee, Y. C. G. (2012). Characterization of a New Mouse Model of Empyema and the Mechanisms of Pleural Invasion by Streptococcus pneumoniae. American Journal Of Respiratory Cell And Molecular Biology, 46(2), 180-187. doi:10.1165/rcmb.2011-0182OC