John Doorbar has made significant contributions to understanding the interaction between human papillomaviruses and the infected epithelial cell over the last two decades.   These achievements include analysis of the structure and function of the E4 protein, understanding the life cycle of the virus and virus latency, understanding the cervical transformation zone and more recently, dissecting the mechanism that regulate epithelial homeostasis using viral proteins as research tools.   His work has been cited by approximately 16000 manuscripts, and he has a considerable number of influential manuscripts, that have impacted the way that researchers understand the virus infection and transmission processes. In recent years, he has obtained funding from Johnson and Johnson to look at virus stability and transmission, from Hologic to map gene expression patterns, and from GSK to develop analytical tools to understand the infection process. He currently has commercial funding (Maruho) to develop drugs which interfere with the normal homeostasis process. The total industrial income from these sources amounts to around £3.5 million over the last decade or so, which has contributed to the training of the 39 postgraduate students who have worked in the lab. The E4 antibodies that we developed are now sold commercially as a diagnostic kit licenced by the MRC. The work of the lab is distinct from others internationally, and the group has a strong international presence. In July 2022, the lab hosted the DNA Tumour virus meeting in Cambridge, which attracted researchers from over 20 countries.

Yuwen Chen is a PhD student in Doorbar Lab who is working on the biological and wetlab side to study how different HPV types are affecting epithelial homeostasis. She is also working on scRNA-seq analysis to perform discovery of major pathways regulating epithelial homeostasis under HPV infection. She is also active in the field of biophysics and systems biology of tissue homeostasis.