The Barker / Williams-Gray Lab

11/08/2026

Roger was quoted in a newly published article from Parkinson’s Insights highlighting the growing dangers of rogue clinics, fake stem cell therapies and unapproved injectables targeting people with Parkinson’s.

The International Society for Stem Cell Research has excellent guides to help people spot unlicensed and potentially dangerous therapies — well worth a read.

Read the full article from Parkinson’s Insight:

The promise of stem cells and anti ageing breakthroughs has created a massive market. Yet behind polished marketing lies a treacherous landscape of rogue clinics, unappr...

10/08/2026

The Movers & Shakers Podcast have released their latest Parky Profile and this week it's with Professor Roger Barker 🧠

Roger shares with his journey to medicine and neuroscience, and the theory behind his groundbreaking work into the use of foetal and stem cell transplants to treat Parkinson's.

He is also one of the drivers and creators of the lauded World Parkinson's Congress, and discloses his thoughts on this year's event.

Listen to the full episode now wherever you get your podcasts 🎙️
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/g4Rv5MHK
Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/gbJ5qD7D

This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn

10/08/2026

We're delighted to share some great news from the lab!

A huge congratulations to our PhD student, Angelica Guiloff MSc (Dist), who has been selected for the Genevia Single-Cell Mentorship Program 2026 with Genevia Technologies 🎉

The program provides six months of expert mentorship (October–March), which Angelica will be using to support the analysis of her single-cell data. We're excited to see how this collaboration helps move the project forward.

We were especially pleased to hear the feedback from the Genevia team:

"Selecting the winners was not easy, but in the end, we believe that your project, combined with our expertise in single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, holds great promise — we look forward to making some exciting discoveries together!"

Congratulations again, Angelica!

20/07/2026

Great to catch up with Claire Clelland last Thursday, as she was in Cambridge with her family.

Claire worked with us a few years ago on research around neurogenesis as part of her PhD and MPhil, so it was fantastic to see her again and hear about everything she's been doing since.

Here we are enjoying the UK weather!

Claire is now at University of California, San Francisco, where she's doing incredible research in gene editing with the potential to transform how we treat certain brain diseases.

16/07/2026

Congratulations to our Academic Clinical Fellow, Rosana-Bristena Ionescu, on being awarded an Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust (ACT) Research Grant for the IMUN-HD project!

IMUN-HD is a collaborative research project investigating the role of the immune system in Huntington’s disease using cutting-edge single-cell sequencing and advanced proteomic profiling. By integrating these complementary approaches, the project aims to generate new insights into disease biology and identify potential biomarkers and candidate therapeutic targets.

We are delighted to see ACT supporting innovative translational neuroscience research and look forward to following the progress of the project.

Congratulations, Bristena!

13/07/2026

A great few days at the International Society for Stem Cell Research Annual Meeting in Montreal!

Roger delivering his plenary lecture, sharing the latest progress from stem cell trials for Parkinson's disease. It's exciting to see how far the field has come and the potential these advances hold for patients.

It was also a pleasure to catch up with colleagues from around the world, including Zoe Hewitt, who now leads the Regen CTC in the UK, and Jihwan Song from Seoul, whose research is focused on developing new treatments for Huntington's disease.

09/07/2026

Big news for stem cell-based therapies in Parkinson’s disease today 👏

A landmark study led by Lund University in collaboration with the University of Cambridge, reports the first clinical results from the STEM-PD trial. The study shows that transplanting stem cell-derived dopamine progenitor cells into the brain is feasible!

Eight people with Parkinson’s disease received the transplanted cells, and no serious side effects linked to the cell product were observed during the first year of follow-up

🔗 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-026-04525-0

09/07/2026

Roger is in Montreal at the annual ISSCR meeting where he is discussing dopamine cell therapies in Parkinson's disease including the Lund-Cambridge Stem PD trial.

He is giving a plenary talk on Saturday presenting the data from this and other published trials using this approach - exciting times!

02/07/2026

Congratulations to our PhD student Sophie on being awarded a completion grant from Newnham College, Cambridge. 🎓 This is a well-deserved recognition of her commitment, dedication, and excellent work as she enters the final stage of her doctoral research and prepares to submit her thesis this summer.
It is wonderful to see Newnham’s continued support for our students, helping to provide the encouragement and resources that enable them to complete their research at this important milestone in their academic journeys.
We wish Sophie every success with her thesis submission and look forward to celebrating this next achievement. 🌟

29/06/2026

On 16th June 2026, Roger joined international colleagues in Barcelona for the Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) meeting to explore new ways of understanding what may go wrong in Parkinson's as we age. This could pave the way to an entirely new treatment approach for this condition. We're looking forward to seeing where this work leads!