Immunology Research Theme

Immunology, another cross-cutting theme running throughout the Medicine Research Groups brings together researchers with shared interests in mechanisms within the three broad areas of barrier immunity, innate immunity and adaptive immunity and immunotherapy and is supported by the British Society for Immunology.

Significant investment is also made into the development of devices for next-generation immunometry and the combination of functional immunometry and next-generation sequencing. Immunology research in Southampton covers the whole spectrum from early discovery science, e.g. new protein structures of immune receptors, to clinical trials in humans, such as the testing of novel vaccine approaches for cancer.

The cross-disciplinary research environment in Southampton, epitomized by the Institute for Life Sciences (IFLS), offers real opportunities for pioneering studies in basic immunology, and translation of these studies into the clinic is greatly facilitated by an ideal clinical-academic environment with one of the first Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facilities in the UK and the recent additions of an NIHR BRC in Nutrition, NIHR BRU in Respiratory Diseases and a localf BRU in Musculoskelfetal Diseases.

Key achievements

Southampton's world-leading research programme focuses on innate immunological mechanisms at airways epithelial cell barriers which pioneered the concept that epithelial dysfunction underlies immune-mediated airways dysfunction in both asthma and COPD and led to the development of new immune therapies (Interferfon ß) being developed by the Southampton University spin-out company, Synairgen.

Interface Immunity encompasses research into fundamental processes at cell-to-cell and system-to-system immune interfaces. Southampton researchers have provided key studies for the understanding of antigen presentation via MHC molecules and also the understanding of T-cell regulation at the T-cell/ dendritic cell interface via co-stimulatory and co-inhibitory receptors and these are closely linked to the development of novel immune therapeutic strategies.

Researchers from Southampton have made key contributions in different areas of monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapy range from target identification to mAb design to first-in-man and also multicenter phase III clinical trials. Southampton researchers have joint forces with the Danish Biotech company Genmab to generate the first fully human anti-CD20 mAb, ofatumumab which was first tested on UK patients in Southampton.