The Cope lab is housed in 1200m² of dedicated research space in the Centre for Inflammation Biology and Cancer Immunology (CIBCI) on the Guy’s Campus, a Centre of the School of Immunology and Microbial Sciences. Research has focused on three key themes:

• Defining aberrant pathways of T cell activation and differentiation in the context of chronic inflammatory diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis
• Mapping the synovial immunopeptidome by defining peptides presented by MHC class II molecules in the inflamed RA synovium
• Understanding how allelic variants of immunologically important genes contribute to autoimmune disease pathogenesis

Clinical research interests pf the Cope lab revolve around aspects of inflammatory arthritis, including very early inflammatory arthritis and disease remission states. He is currently Chief Investigator of the RA prevention studies – the APIPPRA and ALTO trials, one of the largest randomised controlled clinical trials of interception in people at high risk of developing RA. A key goal of translational research in the laboratory relating to these interception trials is to exploit multi-‘omic approaches to refine the at risk state at a molecular and cellular level.