Mr James Charlesworth

James is a PhD student in the Allergy and Clinical Immunology section within the National Heart and Lung Institute. He is working on regulatory B cells in allergy under the supervision of Professor Stephen Durham.

James received his first degree in 2008 from the University of Birmingham, reading a Bachelors degree in Medical Science (BmedSc) (Cell and Molecular Pathology). During his studies he undertook a six-month project in within the Institute for Biomedical Research and MRC centre for Immunity and Infection. The project was supervised by Prof. Christopher Buckley, Dr. Adam Cunningham and Dr. Ewan Ross, and investigated the resolution of Salmonella Typhimurium infection with respect to cellular immunity using mice knocked out for platelet-endothelial cell adhesion molecule -1 (PECAM-1/CD31).

In 2009 James was awarded a studentship from the MRC to undertake a 4-year PhD programme at the MRC and Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma, which is a collaborative centre between King’s College London and Imperial College London. He completed a Masters in Immunology at King’s College London in 2010 having undertaken a six-month lab project examining the phenotype, function and generation of cytokine-induced CD8+ regulatory T cells supervised by Dr. Alistair Noble.

Continuing the 4-year programme funded by the MRC James began his PhD at Imperial College’s National Heart and Lung Institute, in the section for Allergy and Clinical Immunology. He is supervised by Professor Stephen Durham (ICL), Dr. David Cousins (KCL) and Mr. Mohamed Shamji (ICL) and works in a group highly published and renowned for their work in immunotherapy for patients highly allergic towards grass pollen.

James’ PhD will focus on the role of the B cell subset recently defined as regulatory B cells, or ‘Bregs’. He will expand the knowledge of these cells and examine their phenotype, functional properties and predominance in allergic patients compared to non-allergic controls.

James is currently on the PhD student committee for the MRC/Asthma UK centre which organises regular scientific, social and vocational events for PhD students within the centre throughout the year.