One of the foremost immunologists and gastroenterology researchers in the world, Professor Anthony (Tony) Segal is the Charles Dent Professor of Medicine at the UCL Faculty of Medical Sciences, # 1 in London for Medicine and # 7 in the world as a Faculty of Medical Sciences.

Professor Segal is an expert in the field of Crohn’s disease research, ulcerative colitis and inflammatory bowel disease, having discovered the cause of Crohn’s disease and performed fundamental research into ulcerative colitis. He is also the leading expert on innate immunity and the mechanisms by which white blood cells kill microbes. Professor Segal has three doctorates, in Science (London), Philosophy (London), and Medicine (Cape Town). He has over 230 peer reviewed publications, many of them in Nature (7), Science (2), the Lancet (10), New England Journal of Medicine and many other top ranking journals. He has been cited over 18,000 times with an outstanding H index of 71.

Apart for being an outstanding clinician/scientist he is an expert biochemist, molecular biologist and geneticist.

Research - past

As Director of the Centre for Molecular Medicine Professor Segal’s research has been devoted to the investigation of the relationship between innate immunity and human disease. 

Professor Segal is  a Consultant Gastroenterologist and has  discovered the cause of Crohn’s disease.  His laboratory is currently working to find drugs to treat this condition. He also investigates the cause of ulcerative colitis.

His immunological research has also discovered the way in which white blood cells kill bacteria and fungi. This is not, as was previously believed to be due to free radicals, but to the activation of lethal enzymes that are selectively activated after the microbes have been engulfed.

He discovered the cause of Chronic Granulomatous Disease (CGD), and with his then PhD student, Professor Adrian Thrasher, performed the first experiments to prove that gene therapy would be a feasible treatment of this condition. This is now becoming standard therapy.

In discovering the cause of CGD he discovered and characterised a class of molecules called NOXs, which are essential for life across the biological spectrum, from plants and bacteria to man. These NOXs are fundamental to many of the functions of these species, from the growth of pollen tubes and roots in plants, to invasion by fungi and immunity and many other functions in man.