Anne O’Garra

Biosketch

Anne O’Garra, PhD FRS, is a Principal Group Leader, heading the Laboratory of Immunoregulation and Infection and formerly also Associate Research Director at The Francis Crick Institute, London. She earned her BSc in Microbiology and Biochemistry from the University of London and her PhD in Microbial Biochemistry from the Division of Microbiology, the MRC National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), Mill Hill, London. She became a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Division of Immunology, NIMR, to work on cytokines and the immune response. As an independent Group Leader at the DNAX Research Institute (now Merck), California, USA over fifteen years she directed her laboratory in defining key functions and mechanisms for cytokine expression and function in the immune response. She was then recruited back to London and formed the new Division of Immunoregulation at NIMR to interface immunology and infectious disease research. The NIMR then became a major part of The Francis Crick Institute when it was initiated in 2015. She is a member of the British Society for Immunology and the American Association of Immunologists. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, UK; a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; a Fellow of the Royal Society, UK; a member of EMBO; now an international member of the US NAS; received the ICIS 2020 Honorary Lifetime Membership Award. She is an Editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine and served on the Board and SAB of the Keystone Symposia.

Research Interests

Dr. O’Garra’s research seeks to understand mechanisms for cytokine expression and function in the immune response in protection against pathogens and control of the immune response to prevent host damage. These studies involved the identification of IL-10 as a major regulator of immune responses by effects on macrophages and dendritic cells at the level of antigen presentation and production of cytokines such as IL-12 and IL-18 by myeloid cells which direct Th1 responses and the production of IFN-gamma, critical for eradication of intracellular pathogens. The cytokine IL-10 functions as a feedback regulator to inhibit damage to the host during infection but can contribute in other contexts to chronic infection. An additional focus is on the study of the immune response in tuberculosis (TB) in mouse models and human disease, identifying type I interferon as a key mediator of TB pathogenesis. Infection with the pathogen M. tuberculosis can result in active TB disease with 1.6 million deaths annually, although a quarter of the world is estimated to have been infected with this pathogen and yet remain healthy. The factors determining outcome remain unclear. Studies now involve: (i) the identification of immune factors in the airways of mouse models of TB-resistance and -susceptibility and of human TB patients and their asymptomatic contacts, to further understand the local factors in the lung that determine disease outcome; and (ii) basic research to understand the role of transcription factors and cytokines in mucosal immune responses in the intestine.