B cell development, autoimmunity and immune regulation

Our goal is to understand how the immune system regulates the response to self- and foreign antigens, including how B cells are selected during their development and ontogeny, the causes of human immunodeficiency and how insights from these can help us to improve the normal immune response to antigens, and how dysregulation of the immune response leads to systemic autoimmune disease. We have a longstanding interest in how checkpoint receptor agonists may be used to suppress inflammation and autoimmune disease in humans. More recently, we have started to investigate the immune pathology of lupus and other autoimmune kidney diseases, to improve diagnosis and stratify patients, and test new therapeutic targets. We address these questions with a variety of functional, genetic and therapeutic approaches. Our experiments use transgenic mice, molecular tools and models that can be used to track cells and characterise the immune response to antigens, self-tolerance and B cell selection. We use gene targeting to model human disease and gain insights into new mechanisms, and we are developing single-cell approaches, including spatial imaging, to characterise the immune response and the pathology of disease. We have formed a university spin-out company, MIROBIO, to translate our discoveries into clinical practice.