Nick Cunniffe

Academic Clinical Lecturer who joined the lab in 2018.

Nick is an Academic Clinical Lecturer who joined the lab in 2018 to undertake a PhD which evaluated different methods of promoting and measuring remyelination (his review on the subject: Cunniffe, J Neurol 2021 PMID: 31190170). He is co-first author of our CCMR-One trial manuscript, which showed that bexarotene promotes remyelination in people with relapsing multiple sclerosis (Brown & Cunniffe, PMID: TBC). He is also responsible for the CCMR Two trial, which will test whether the combination of metformin and clemastine can similarly enhance remyelination. He has a specialist interest in electrophysiology, in particular the use of visual evoked potentials and tests of eye movements, to measure the effects of remyelinating and neuroprotective therapies in MS. He has also been working with the MS Society to select repurposed treatments for testing in progressive MS trials (Cunniffe, JNNP 2021 PMID: 33184094), as well as contributing to the clinical trial response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Cambridge (Cunniffe, BMJ Open 2020 PMID: 33020111). Outside of the lab, Nick is committed to medical education: he supervises neuroscience to medical students at Gonville and Caius College and is author of a neuroscience textbook due to be released in 2021. He is also the Association of British Neurology Trainees representative for the East of England.

Gioia Riboni-Verri

PhD student joined in October 2021.

Funded by the MRC DTP partnership to pursue a PhD on the topic of endogenous and therapeutic remyelination in Multiple Sclerosis (MS). She is particularly interested in identifying reliable tools and measures of remyelination that can be feasibly introduced in clinical practice. She is also greatly involved in CCMR2, carrying out all visual assessments on participants. She has a background in translational biomedical research, and has worked in industry for a couple of years.