Research Associate

Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine
National Heart and Lung Institute @ Imperial College
Chelsea, London
UK, SW3 6LR

Telephone	+44 (0)20 7352 8121 ext 3362 / 3373
Fax	+44 (0)20 7351 8336

Current research interests:

• A fairly high proportion of people who work with high molecular weight allergens develop an allergy to them. Others, doing exactly the same kind of work, do not. The reasons for this are unclear but they may relate to the ways in which different people regulate their immune responses.
• My current research interests are focussed on understanding ‘regulation’. Human T regulatory cells have been shown in vitro to be suppressive of allergic responses; and in hayfever they have a significantly reduced suppressive activity. We are investigating the role of such regulatory T cells and cytokines in occupational allergy.
• Other research has also focussed on understanding the immune mechanisms of occupational allergy through determining HLA associations, looking at whether ‘high dose tolerance’ exists and its mechanisms, T cell epitope mapping of major aeroallergens, and determining cross reactivity between lipocain allergens.