Professor Graham Anderson PhD, BSc

• 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, and MRC Programme Grant support, Graham was appointed to a Chair in T-Lymphocyte Biology in 1995.

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'. He is currently a member of the Wellcome Trust Expert Review Group ‘Immune System In Health and Disease’, and a Scientific Advisory Board member for activities in The Universities of Glasgow and Oxford, and the KG Jebsen Centre for Autoimmune Disorders, in Norway.

• 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 Graham on the contact deatils above, or for any general doctoral research enquiries, please email: dr@contacts.bham.ac.uk or call +44 (0)121 414 5005.

Research themes

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

Research activity

As Professor of Experimental Immunology in The Institute of Immunology and Immunotherapy, Graham's laboratory examines the developmental and functional biology of T-cells in immunity. His research for the past 25 years has focused on the developmental biology of T-cells, and the role of the thymus in this process. Research from his lab has identified important regulatory mechanisms in self-tolerant T-cell generation. This has consistently led to original research publications including Nature (1993, 2006), J. Exp. Med. (1992, 1994, 2003, 2007, 2013, 2017a, 2017b, 2018), PNAS (2009), Immunity (2009, 2012) and Blood (2005, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c, 2012) together with invited commentaries and reviews in Annual Reviews in Immunology (1996, 2017), Immunity (2014), Immunology Today (1997, 1999), Trends in Immunology (2012, 2019), and Nature Reviews Immunology (2001, 2007, 2017).

Major findings include:

• Defining stromal cell requirements for T-cell development (J. Exp. Med. 1992, Nature 1993).
• Identifying cortical epithelium as unique regulators of positive selection (J. Exp. Med. 1994).
• Identification of bipotent thymic epithelial progenitors. (Nature 2006).
• Determining the influence of mesenchyme on thymic epithelial progenitors (J. Exp. Med. 2003).
• A novel role for RANK in thymic medulla formation and central tolerance (J.Exp. Med. 2007).
• Identification of a novel role for invariant dendritic epidermal T-cell precursors in thymus 
medulla formation (Immunity2012).
• Demonstrating that medullary epithelial cells control Foxp3⁺ T-reg generation by regulating development of their Foxp3^- precursors (J. Exp. Med. 2013).
• That CD1d-restricted iNKT-cells regulate thymus medulla development and thymocyte egress (J. Immunol 2014a, 2014b, J. Exp. Med. 2017a).
• CCR7 determines the developmental makeup of the intrathymic TReg pool (Cell Reports 2016).
• Regulation of central tolerance via LTbR-mediated control of thymic dendritic cells (J. Exp. Med. 2017b).
• Control of thymus emigration by LTbR expression by thymus endothelium (J. Exp. Med. 2018).

Graham is currently interested in multiple aspects of thymus function, including:

• Development of thymic epithelial cell lineages.
• Mechanisms of thymus emigration.
• Control of Foxp3+ Regulatory T-cell development.
• Control of intrathymic NKT-cell development.
• Recovery of thymus function following bone marrow transplantation and acute injury.

• 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.