Rodrigo Vieira Motta

After graduating from medical school in Brazil in 2020, I was accepted into Principles and Practice of Clinical Research (PPCR), a global programme offered by Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health. There I learned essential abilities related to all aspects of clinical studies, from translational research to late phase clinical trials, trained on scientific writing and advanced statistics. 

I am a clinical research fellow at the Oxford Liver Unit and Translational Gastroenterology Unit, where I am part of the IgG4-related disease group. We study the pathophysiology of this recently described disease and use translational approaches to identify potential prognostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets. Analysing DNA methylation patterns, we seek to identify pathogenic factors specific to patients with IgG4-RD involving the liver, pancreas and bile ducts in comparison to patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis. Furthermore, I am also interested in the different responses to chronic inflammation in IgG4-RD and what determines the onset of fibrosis and loss of function in organs affected by the disease.