Professor of the Day:Professor Thomas MacDonald, Immunology, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry

Professor Tom MacDonald received a PhD in immunology from Glasgow in 1976 and then did a short post-doc at the Trudeau Institute in upstate New York . In 1978 he was appointed as an assistant professor at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in 1983. In 1984 he left Philadelphia and worked at Merck and Co for a year before returning to Bart's Medical College in 1985. In 1986 he was appointed a Wellcome Trust Senior Lecturer at Bart's (till 1994), was promoted to reader in 1989, and given a personal chair at the University of London in 1991. In 2000 he moved to Southampton medical school to head up the Division of Infection, Inflammation and Repair and then in 2005 he returned to Queen Mary as Professor of Immunology and Dean for Research in the Medical School.

He has over 300 publications, mostly on how inappropriate immune reactions cause disease in the human gut. He was awarded FRCPath in 1995 and FMedSci in 2002 on the basis of his published works. He is currently interested in how negative-regulatory signalling pathways prevent resolution of gut inflammation in human inflammatory bowle disease and how gut bacteria manipulate mucosal immunity.

Tom MacDonald's continuing research interests are in immunology and inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract. Ongoing research projects include identifying novel pathways which can block inflammatory cytokines in IBD (supported by GSK and UCB Pharma); regulation of MMP's in inflamed bowel by TGFbeta; control of TGF beta signalling in IBD by Smad7 and p300 (supported by CICRA); and the function and modulation of Peyer's patch dendritic cells by bacterial products (pathogens and non-pathogens) from the gut (supported by BBSRC).

In more basic studies he continues to use Citrobacter rodentium infection in mice as a model to modulation of host immunity by this pathogen and the way in which the host controls the inflammatory response to this pathogen ( in collaboration with Gad Frankel). Outside Barts and the London he has a wide range of research-asociated activity. He is a member of PSCSB panel at MRC (2007-2011), INSERM GI panel, BBSRC Agri-Food panel (2002-2005), BBSRC REI panel (2003-4), BBSRC Institute Review panels (2005, 2006) and is vice-chairman of the governing body of the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen. He was associate editor of Gut ( 1997-2003), on the editorial board of Gastroenterology (2001-2006) and is a section editor of Inflammatory Bowel Disease . He regularly reviews GI immunology/inflammation related work for Nature, Nature Medicine, Science and J Clin Invest.

Further information at the Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry website.