Research Advisory Board -
Paul Johnson, MBChB MD FRCS

Reader in Paediatric Surgery, Fellow of St Edmund Hall at the University of Oxford, and Consultant Paediatric Surgeon at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

Paul Johnson qualified in medicine from the University of Leicester and subsequently trained in General Surgery in Leicester and Derby, followed by higher surgical training in Paediatric Surgery in Oxford, Melbourne, and Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.

Between 1993 and 1996 he was a Research Fellow in the Department of Surgery at the University of Leicester, where he undertook a project on the Isolation of Human Islets of Langerhans for Pancreatic Islet Transplantation. This led to a Doctorate of Medicine and started his ongoing interest in the field of Islet Transplantation for reversing Type 1 Diabetes. He was awarded a Hunterian Professorship from the Royal College of Surgeons of England for this research in 1998.

In 2002, Mr Johnson was appointed Director of the Islet Transplant Programme in Oxford. He is currently Chairman of the Research division of British Association of Paediatric Surgeons Research and Clinical Effectiveness Committee, Founder of the UK Academic Paediatric Surgeons Group and Co-Secretary of the International Pancreas and Islet Transplantation Association. He is also Clinical Tutor at St Edmund Hall.

He has an active research group and his research interests include ways of optimising the current methods used for islet isolation with particular reference to pancreatic structure and collagenase, and the developmental biology of the pancreas and foregut with particular relevance to the use of adult stem cells as an alternative source of islet tissue for transplantation.

In addition to islet transplantation, his clinical interests include the neonatal and paediatric pancreas (endocrine and exocrine), as well as other aspects of paediatric surgical gastroenterology.