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Tidewater Clinical ResearchDepartment of Acute Care and Recovery Sciences, Tidewater University

Research group

Inflammation and Healing Lab

How the body's immune response shapes healing after major surgery.

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The lab studies blood and tissue markers that predict who will heal well and who is at risk of complications, and tests simple ways to steer recovery in the right direction.

Our research

The studies listed on this page are run or led by the group. Each one is entered once and also appears on the matching theme pages.

Our studies

Our people

  • Professor Marguerite Ashdown

    Group Leader

    Marguerite trained in general surgery before moving into laboratory research. Her work links immune signals in the first days after surgery to longer-term recovery.

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  • Dr Clara Vossberg

    Postdoctoral Research Fellow

    Clara runs the lab’s biomarker platform and leads its work on wound healing in older adults.

  • Noah Pemberley

    PhD Candidate

    Noah’s doctoral project looks at whether a simple blood test on day two can flag patients who need closer follow-up.

Publications

Selected paper

Early blood markers and complications after bowel surgery: a cohort study

Ashdown M, Vossberg C, Pemberley N, et al. Journal of Example Surgery, 2026. doi:10.5555/example.2026.001

In plain language: We measured inflammation in the blood of 400 people on the second day after bowel surgery. People with high levels were three times more likely to develop a complication, which suggests a simple test could help teams decide who needs closer monitoring.

  • Inflammatory markers on the second post-operative day: a validation studyVossberg C, Pemberley N, Ashdown M. Example Surgical Science, 2026. doi:10.5555/example.2026.101
  • Wound healing trajectories in adults over 70Vossberg C, Ashdown M. Example Wound Research, 2025. doi:10.5555/example.2025.102