In this episode of To Immunity and Beyond, Paul Klenerman talks to Mark Coles of Oxford’s Kennedy Institute about why rheumatoid arthritis targets particular joints and what this can reveal about the origins of inflammatory disease. Mark discusses research tracing differences between joints back to embryonic development, including the role of fibroblasts, blood vessels and the tissue microenvironment in determining susceptibility to inflammation. The conversation also explores how environmental exposures can trigger chronic inflammatory disease, the emerging field of restorative immunology, and the ambition to move beyond controlling inflammation towards resetting diseased tissues to a genuinely healthy state. Further Reading: The embryonic origins of site-specific arthritis | Nature Immunology, Nature Immunology volume 27, pages1390–1403 (2026).
