Departmental homepageProfessor Burton qualified in clinical medicine from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, before returning to Cambridge to pursue basic research into human reproduction. He joined the Department of Anatomy as a University Demonstrator and was promoted to Lecturer, Reader and then a personal chair. He was appointed Mary Marshall and Arthur Walton Professor of the Physiology of Reproduction in 2013, and held this in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience until his retirement in 2020. He was elected a Fellow at St John's in 1982 and has served as a supervisor, Director of Studies in Pre-Clinical Medicine and Tutor. He was the Founding Director of the Centre for Trophoblast Research, a centre-of-excellence in placental biology at the University of Cambridge, from 2007 to 2020, and the founder and inaugural Chair of Cambridge Reproduction, a cross-disciplinary Strategic Research Initiative that brings together the biological, clinical and social sciences with the arts and humanities.
Professor Burton's research has transformed our understanding of human early pregnancy, demonstrating that initial development of the embryo takes place in a protective low-oxygen environment, stimulated through a hormonal dialogue with the lining of the uterus that boosts release of growth-promoting factors and nutrients. More recently, he was involved in the derivation of both uterine and placental organoids, allowing maternal-fetal interactions during early pregnancy to be investigated in a systematic fashion. In addition, he demonstrated how deficiencies in placental development lay the foundations of common complications of pregnancy, providing a biological rationale for considering miscarriage, stillbirth, growth restriction, pre-eclampsia and premature delivery as a spectrum of disorders sharing a similar pathophysiology distinguished by their severity.
Burton, G.J. and Jauniaux, E. (2023) The human placenta: new perspectives on its formation and function during early pregnancy. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 290: 20230191.
Burton, G.J., Redman, C.W., Roberts, J.M. and Moffett, A. (2019) Pre-eclampsia: pathophysiology and clinical implications. British Medical Journal, 366, l2381.
Turco, M.Y., Gardner, L., Kay, R.G., Hamilton, R.S., Prater, M., Hollinshead, M., McWhinnie, A., Esposito, L., Fernando, R., Skelton, H., Reimann, F., Gribble, F., Sharkey, A., Marsh, S.G.E., O’Rahilly, S., Hemberger, M., Burton, G.J.* and Moffett, A.* (2018) Trophoblast organoids as a model for maternal-fetal interactions during human placentation. Nature 564, 263-267.
Benirschke’s Pathology of the Human Placenta. (2022) 7th edition. Eds, Baergen, R.N., Burton, G.J. and Caplan, C.G. Springer, Berlin, pp.939.
