Dr Rosemary J Boyton

 

Dr Rosemary Boyton established the Lung Immunology Group having been awarded an MRC Clinician Scientist Fellowship. She is also co-PI of the Human Disease Immunogenetics Group. The mission of the Lung Immunology Group is to gain an understanding of the molecular interactions in T lymphocyte responses leading to respiratory disease, major goals being to elucidate pathological mechanisms and design effective and specific therapies including vaccine development. 

Key research areas are:  the role of T cell receptor (TCR) structure on T cell effector function; and the role of innate and adaptive immunity in the development and regulation of infectious and allergic lung inflammation. Dr Boyton has shown that CD4 T cells selected by antigen under Th2 polarizing conditions favour elongated TCRalpha chain complementarity determining region (CDR3) predicted on structural grounds to bind peptide/MHC with a lower affinity to their Th1 counterparts. This data led to the “structural hypothesis” that under Th2 favouring conditions, cells are selected by low affinity for peptide/MHC and this is achieved by selecting TCR chains with sterically obstructive CDR3alpha loops.

Dr Boyton has developed several TCR, lung targeted, and inducible (Cre/Lox) transgenic models to study the impact of TCR structure on T cell function including lung inflammation. She now uses these models to study innate and adaptive immune mechanisms in the development and regulation of pulmonary inflammation, airway hyperreactivity and airway remodeling in infectious and allergic inflammation.

Dr Boyton is a Principal Investigator in the MRC & Asthma UK centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma and the Centre for Respiratory Infection funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Funding for the group comes from the Medical Research Council, BBSRC, Wellcome Trust, Asthma UK, Welton Foundation, NHLI Foundation, and Royal Brompton NHLI Clinical Research Comittee.

Dr Boyton is on the editorial board of Clinical & Experimental Immunology.

Dr  Boyton trained in medicine at Royal Free Hospital, London University. After SHO posts in London at Royal Brompton Hospital (Respiratory), Hammersmith Hospital (Cardiology), Guys Hospital (Renal) and the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford (Neurology), and registrar posts on the Hammersmith Hospital/Royal Postgraduate Medical School Respiratory/Infectious Disease/General Internal Medicine rotation (Hammersmith and Ealing Hospital) she was awarded a Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship for Medical Graduates to study mechanisms of T cell activation in Th1 and Th2 responses at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, Hammersmith Campus, Imperial College  London. Having been awarded her PhD, she then completed her clinical training at Royal Brompton, Royal Free, and St Mary’s Hospitals’ and was awarded a CCST in Respiratory Medicine/General Internal Medicine G(I)M before taking up a post as Senior Lecturer & Honorary Consultant Physician at Imperial College London and  Royal Brompton Hospital. Her clinical work comprises inpatient and outpatient care of patients with respiratory disease in general with a specialist interest in respiratory infection.

With Professor Danny Altmann and Dr Francois Balloux, Dr Rosemary Boyton has  organised a meeting  to be held at The Royal Society, in London June 2011 called "Human evolution, migration and history revealed by genetics, immunity and infection". This meeting offers a journey from molecules to history, bringing together geneticists, immunologists, anthropologists and historians. Infection has been the most potent evolutionary force in human history, eliminating genes offering poor resistance and selecting for new mutations conferring protection against a threat. The meeting will address the issue of how genetics can help us understand natural selection, human evolution and migration over the past 70,000 years.

Speakers and Chairs include: Professor Mark Achtman, Professor Danny Altmann, Dr Kristian Andersen, Dr Francois Balloux, Professor Luigi Cavalli- Sforza, Professor Marc Feldmann FRS, Professor Marcelo Fernández-Viña, Dr Sebastien Gagneux, Professor Adrian Hill, Professor Nina Jablonski, Professor Mark Jobling, Professor John Novembre, Dr Stephen Oppenheimer, Professor Peter Parham FRS, Dr Alice Roberts, Professor Chris Stringer FRS, Professor Erik Thorsby, Professor Eske Willerslev, Dr Sarah Williams-Blangero