Paul Riley

Paul Riley is the British Heart Foundation Professor of Regenerative Medicine based at the University of Oxford where he is also the Chair of Development & Cell Biology within the Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics. He is the inaugural Director of the Institute of Developmental and Regenerative Medicine (IDRM) which came online in May 2022 and Co-Director of the MRC/BHF Centre of Research Excellence in Advanced Cardiac Therapies (REACT) which started in January 2025. He was formerly Professor of Molecular Cardiology at the UCL-Institute of Child Health, London, where he was a principal investigator within the Molecular Medicine Unit for 12 years. Prior to this, he obtained his PhD at UCL and completed post-doctoral fellowships in Toronto and Oxford.

In 2008, Professor Riley was awarded an Outstanding Achievement Award by the European Society of Cardiology, in recognition of his team’s discovery that activated epicardial cells can regenerate the adult mammalian heart, and in 2014 he was elected a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

His research interests span across multiple aspects of cardiovascular development and modelling congenital heart disease, alongside how to restore embryonic potential and condition the local environment in the injured/diseased adult heart to facilitate optimal repair and regeneration.

Title: The role(s) of the cardiac lymphatics in disease