Professor Graham Anderson BSc, PhD, FMedSci

• Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences 2022
• PhD Immunology 1993
• BSc (Hons) Anatomical Studies 1987

Graham Anderson gained a BSc (Hons) in Anatomical Studies from the University of Birmingham in 1990. He then studied for a PhD in Immunology as a Wellcome Prize PhD student. He then continued his research into thymus biology as a Wellcome Prize Fellow until 1994, and was appointed to a lectureship in the Department of Anatomy in 1995. Since then, Graham has continued to work in Birmingham studying the role of the thymus in the development of a self-tolerant T-cell pool.

Following project grant support from The Wellcome Trust, he has held MRC Programme Grant support since 2000. Graham was appointed to a Chair in T-Lymphocyte Biology in 1995, and Professor of Experimental Immunology in 2016. 

He has acted as as a member of the ARUK Research Subcommittee (2007-2009), as Deputy Chairman (2009-2012) and as a member of the ARUK Programme Triage Committee (2010-2012).

Graham has served on the Editorial Boards of 'Journal of 'Immunology' ‘European Journal of Immunology’ and ‘Trends in Immunology’, and 'Frontiers in Immunological Tolerance'. Past and current memberships include the Wellcome Trust Expert Review Group ‘Immune System In Health and Disease’, Scientific Advisory Board memberships at The Universities of Glasgow and Oxford, and the KG Jebsen Centre for Autoimmune Disorders, in Norway. He is also part of the advisory group for the Thymus Transplant Programme at Great Ormond Street Hospital, and a member of European Science Foundation College of Experts. Graham is also a Visiting Professor at The Institute of Genome Research, University of Tokushima, Japan.

• MBChB
• MedSci 
  

Graham supervises doctoral research students in the areas of thymus biology and T-cell development.

If you are interesting in studying any of these subject areas please contact Professor Graham Anderson directly, or for any general doctoral research enquiries, please email mds-gradschool@contacts.bham.ac.uk.

For a full list of available Doctoral Research opportunities, please visit our Doctoral Research programme listings.

Research themes

T-cell biology, Thymus and T-cell development, T-cell Tolerance and Immunity.

Research activity

Graham Anderson is Professor of Experimental Immunology at The University of Birmingham. His research focus is thymus biology, and has published over 160 peer-reviewed research articles in this field. Early in his career, he established new approaches to study thymus function within defined three-dimensional reaggregate cultures. This resulted in a landmark publication in 1993 in ‘Nature’, and in 2022 this was highlighted by The Journal of Immunology in their ‘Pillars in Immunology’ series. This experimental system is now used worldwide as a cornerstone technique of thymus research.

Following a Wellcome Fellowship, Graham was appointed as an independent group leader in in 1994. He continued to work on specialization of thymic stroma for T-cell development, including identifying unique properties of the thymic cortex for positive selection (J. Exp. Med. 1994). The discovery that fibroblasts influence thymic epithelial progenitors (J. Exp. Med. 2003) opened up new research directions with stromal crosstalk as a focus. In 2005, Graham was appointed Professor of T-cell Biology at the MRC Centre for Immune Regulation. In 2006 in ‘Nature’, he provided the first description of a new progenitor cell type that generates both cortical and medullary thymic areas. In 2007 in J. Exp. Med., he showed the Tumor Necrosis Receptor Superfamily member RANK controls thymus medulla formation and tolerance induction. This first demonstration of innate immune regulation during development of a primary lymphoid organ provided a molecular explanation for lymphostromal crosstalk in thymus. In 2012, these ideas were further developed in an ‘Immunity’ paper describing the importance of T-cells in thymus development, and helped form an emerging concept of innate/adaptive immune interplay.

Most recently, his studies highlight how thymic epithelial subtypes regulate qualitatively different T-cell subsets (Nature Comms. 2020), and control pregnancy success (Nature 2020). Finally, his work identifying an intra-thymic innate cell network that drives thymus regeneration (Science Immunology 2022), and selective failures in thymus function post bone marrow transplant (J. Exp. Med. 2022), offer clinically tractable targets to effective immune reconstitution.

Previous and ongoing positions include:

• Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences
• Deputy Chair, ARUK Research Subcommittee
• Member, ARUK Programme Grant Triage Committee
• Editorial Board Member, European Journal of Immunology
• Editorial Board Member, Trends in Immunology
  
• Editorial Board Member, Journal of Immunology
• Editorial Board Member, Frontiers in Immunological Tolerance
• Visiting Professor, Institute for Genome Research, Unversity of Tokushima, Japan
• Panel member, Wellcome Trust Expert Review Group ‘Immune System in Health and Disease’
• Scientific Advisory Board, Great Ormond Street Hospital, steering group on thymus transplantation
• Scientific Advisory Board, KG Jebsen Centre for Autoimmunity, University of Bergen, Norway
• Advisory group member for the Thymus Transplant Programme at Great Ormond Street Hospital
• Member of European Science Foundation College of Experts