Pawel Swietach

Pawel grew up in Warsaw and came to Oxford to read for a BA in Physiology in 1998, for which he was awarded the Physiological Society Prize. He completed his Wellcome Trust-funded DPhil in 2004 in Professor Vaughan-Jones’ laboratory in Oxford, studying spatial aspects of pH regulation in cardiac myocytes. The focus of the thesis was on the role of mobile buffers (carriers), gap junctions (channels) and carbonic anhydrase (enzymes) in controlling the acid/base balance in heart tissue.

After his doctorate, Pawel worked on a collaborative project between Oxford (Professor Vaughan-Jones' laboratory) and Salt Lake City, Utah (Professor Kenneth Spitzer's laboratory) on electrophysiology, Ca²⁺ signalling and pH-Ca²⁺ interactions. During this period, Pawel was a Junior Research Fellow in Somerville College and Oriel College. With Professors Vaughan-Jones and Spitzer, Pawel developed techniques to induce and image ion non-uniformity at high spatial resolution and produced mathematical models to analyse and interpret experimental data.

In 2008, Pawel was successful in his application for a Royal Society University Research Fellowship to study spatial pH regulation in the heart and cancer. He was subsequently awarded an MRC New Investigator Grant to study pH regulation and metabolism in tumours. It is believed that tumours are better adapted at maintaining a more uniform pH, despite periods of poor vasculature and hypoxia. The project investigates the role of channels (gap junctions), carriers (pH buffers and acid-base transporters) and enzymes (carbonic anhydrase) on the ability of metabolising tissue to regulate and manage their acid-load, both in the intra- and extracellular compartments. Regulation of pH gradients is of importance to tissue growth and survival, and also from a clinical perspective, as pH affects drug targetting. This work is done in collaboration with Professor Richard Vaughan-Jones and Professor Adrian L Harris at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine.

Further information can be found at Swietach Research