Dr Louisa James, BSc (Hons), PhD

Profile

Dr James obtained a BSc in Immunology from King’s College London in 2002. She completed a PhD on the immune mechanisms of allergen immunotherapy, under the supervision of Professor Stephen Durham (National Heart & Lung Institute, Imperial College London). She then returned to King’s College London for post-doctoral training under the supervision of Professor Mark Peakman (Division of Immunology, Infection & Inflammatory Disease) working on a study of peptide immunotherapy for Type 1 Diabetes.

In 2009 Dr James joined the laboratory of Professor Hannah Gould and Professor Brian Sutton (Randall Division of Cell & Molecular Biophysics) to study antibody responses in allergy.

Dr James joined the Centre of Immunobiology in the Blizard institute in 2016 as a Group Leader and Lecturer in Immunology.

Teaching

Research

Research Interests:

The aim of Dr James’ group is to understand how B cell memory is regulated and maintained. Of particular interest is how different microenvironments influence B cell development and antibody production. We use a combination of cellular, molecular, biophysical and computational approaches to analyse B cells and antibody repertoires in human blood and tissue samples. Our goal is that by understanding how B cell memory is induced and maintained we can develop strategies that manipulate antibody responses for therapeutic benefit.

Group members

Dr Hamish King

Hamish is currently a Sir Henry Wellcome PostDoctoral Fellow working in the Centre of Immunobiology at the Blizard Institute, London, where he is studying the transcriptional and regulatory networks that determine B cell identity and function in the human immune system.

His PhD training focused on understanding the regulation of gene expression by sequence-specific transcription factors and other chromatin-based mechanisms. He is now applying his expertise in this area to elucidate the gene regulatory mechanisms that shape human B cell fate decisions using a combination of single-cell and functional genomic approaches.

Dr Lou Herman

Lou  joined Dr. Louisa James’s lab group as a Postdoctoral Researcher. Dr. Herman’s research focuses on developing a tonsil tissue explant culture model in order to measure differences in cell population and look at the antibody repertoire in response to different stimuli in a time-controlled manner. The research focuses on defining the relationship between tissue-resident immune cells and the local antibody repertoire towards respiratory pathogens. One of the aims is to determine whether B cells with different antigen specificities are transcriptionally more similar to each other than B cells with the same specificity when isolated from a similar cellular environment. Herman completed a PhD at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, focusing on the development of Plasmodium knowlesi species-specific recombinant antigens to be used as serosurveillance tools and also to help characterise antibody isotype profiles in endemic human populations.

LinkedIn:  lou-herman-06160647, Twitter profile: @LoukiasM

Publications

Antibody repertoire and gene expression dynamics of diverse human B cell states during affinity maturation. King HW, Orban N, Riches JC, Clear AJ, Warnes G, Teichmann SA, James LK. doi: 10.1101/2020.04.28.054775

Structure of a patient-derived antibody in complex with allergen reveals simultaneous conventional and superantigen-like recognition. Mitropoulou AN, Bowen H, Dodev TS, Davies AM, Bax HJ, Beavil RL, Beavil AJ, Gould HJ, James LK, Sutton BJ. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018, 115; E8707-E8716. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1806840115.

Antibodies and Superantibodies in Chronic Rhinosinusitis with Nasal Polyps. Chen JB, James LK, Davies AM, Wu YC, Rimmer J, Lund VJ, Chen JH, Chan YC, Sutton BJ, Chang TW, Kariyawasam HH, Gould HJ.  Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology 2017, 139; 1195-1204. doi: 10.1016/j.jaci.2016.06.066.

IgG4 inhibits peanut-induced basophil and mast cell activation in peanut tolerant children sensitized to peanut major allergens. Santos AF, James LK, Bahnson HT, Shamji MH, Couto-Francisco NC, Islam S, Houghton S, Clark AT, Stephens A, Turcanu V, Durham SR, Gould HJ, Lack G. J Allergy Clin Immunol 2015, 135; 1249-56. doi: 10.1016/j.jaci.2015.01.012.

Influence of allergen exposure on local and peripheral IgE repertoires in rhinitis. Yu Chang BW, James LK, Vander Heiden JA, Uduman M, Durham SR, Kleinstein SH, Kipling D, Gould HJ.  Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology 2014, 134; 604. doi: 10.1016/j.jaci.2014.07.010.

View all Louisa James Research Publications at http://www.researchpublications.qmul.ac.uk