Professor Davies remains engaged in translational research in the field of CF. She is the clinical lead and Strategy Group member of the UK CF Gene Therapy Consortium; this Consortium was established in 2002 from 3 groups in the UK with CF gene therapy clinical trials experience (Imperial College/ Royal Brompton Hospital, Oxford University and Edinburgh University). The aim is to develop clinically relevant CFTR gene therapy. On the consortium trials she conducts the bronchoscopic assays and leads on the electrophysiological measurements (potential difference) both in the nose and lower airway.She is also heavily involved in clinical trial design and the validation of outcome measures, leading the Core Lung Clearance Index facility for the European CF Society Clinical Trials Network. She works closely with Prof Diana Bilton, the Adult CF clinical lead, on a number of commercially-sponsored clinical trials in CF, largely involving novel small-molecules directed at CFTR function.
She has other streams of research focussed on CF disease pathogenesis; together with Professor Andrew Bush, she has been engaged for several years in a programme of opportunistic bronchoscopic research, using bronchoalveolar lavage and endobronchial biopsies to define inflammatory and remodelling changes at various stages of childhood airways disease; she is currently supervising her 3rd post-graduate student in this area. As part of an interest in non-invasive measurements of airway disease, she has internal collaborations on projects including cyanogenesis in pseudomonas, bronchial blood flow measurements and pathogen-derived volatile organic compounds in exhaled breath. The Chronic Suppurative Lung Disease (CSLD) Consortium of the Respiratory Biomedical Research Unit, of which she is a member, has a strong emphasis on microbiology, in particular novel molecular detection tools.