Dr Rahul Kalla at the University of Glasgow has been awarded a prestigious Kennedy Trust Senior Research Fellowship, worth £1.5m over the next five years to support his research.

During the fellowship, Dr Kalla plans to focus on inflammatory bowel disease-associated inflammatory arthritis, integrating the use of dual-tracer full body PET/CT imaging with spatial transcriptomic technology. In inflammatory bowel disease, around one third of patients develop inflammatory arthritis. Dr Kalla’s research aims to understand why joint inflammation resolves in some people but becomes long lasting in others. By studying both gut and joint tissue in the same people, this project will identify early biological changes shared across organs, providing insight into IBD associated arthritis and immune mediated inflammatory disease more broadly.

This work will build on his previous research during his MRC Clinical Academic Research Partnership (CARP) and National Research Scotland (CSO) fellowships and key research projects funded by Crohn’s & Colitis UK .

On receiving the award, Dr Kalla commented ‘‘It is a real honour to receive the Kennedy Trust Senior Clinical Research Fellowship. I am hugely grateful to the Trust, my mentors and collaborators, and especially the patients who make our research possible. This fellowship gives me the opportunity to take my research beyond the gut and uncover the shared mechanisms driving inflammation in the gut and joints, with the ultimate goal of improving treatments and outcomes for our patients’.

The Kennedy Trust Senior Research Fellowships are the Kennedy Trust’s flagship awards, and Dr Kalla joins an impressive cohort of six previous awardees of this highly competitive scheme. The Fellowship supports promising independent researchers in becoming future leaders in rheumatology and related musculoskeletal, immunological and inflammatory diseases.

Dr Stephen Simpson, CEO of the Kennedy Trust added:

“We are delighted that Rahul will be joining as our newest Senior Research Fellowship holder. Rahul’s research was regarded as highly competitive by the Fellowship award panel and the use of full body PET/CT imaging technology will offer new insights into understanding inflammatory bowel disease-associated inflammatory arthritis. We are delighted to welcome Rahul to the Trust’s network of funded researchers and following his progress as he continues to develop his research.”

For more details about the Kennedy Trust Senior Research Fellowship scheme, please see here or email grants@kennedytrust.org.