Transplantation Research and Immunology Group (TRIG)

Dr Sushma Shankar who has been awarded the second prize in the very first European Society of Organ Transplant (ESOT) Leonard da Vinci Transplant Research Innovation Award, the most prestigious award of the ESOT 2019 Congress in Copenhagen.

Sushma, who is a NIHR Clinical Lecturer in General Surgery & Transplantation in TRIG, was presented with the runner-up prize for her abstract 'Ex vivo-expanded human CD19+ TIM-1+ B regulatory cells can prolong human allograft survival in a humanised mouse model of skin transplantation and can induce human CD4+CD25+CD127lo Treg'.

TRIG are delighted to announce three awards for group members at the NDS Awayday held on 7th February 2019 - they are:

George Adigbli - Best Oral Presentation for Optimizing multilineage human hematopoietic repopulation in non-irradiated NBSGW mice

David Fawkner-Corbett - Best Poster Presentation for An investigation into regulatory T-cells in children with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus

Fadi Issa - NDS Scientific Achievement of the Year

To read more about the Awayday go to:  https://www.nds.ox.ac.uk/news/nds-research-away-day-2019-winners-and-highlights

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Dr Fadi Issa has been chosen as the Winning Recipient in Nanostring's GeoMx Digital Spatial Profiler Grant Program, from over 100 entries worldwide. 

Dr Issa said:  “Spatial genomics has the potential to make a major impact in transplantation research. Digital Spatial Profiling will allow us to collect comprehensive biological information from our precious tissue samples, including highly informative topographic data.  We’re currently leading a clinical trial of a novel cellular therapy, regulatory T cells in renal transplantation, and we believe DSP will be invaluable in understanding patient response and guiding future decisions in this important program.”

The read more about the prize see:

https://nanostring.gcs-web.com/news-releases/news-release-details/nanostring-announces-university-oxford-selected-winning  

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Dr Joanna Hester who has been awarded a grant from the Celgene Research Fellowship programme for her work on low dose Treg combination therapy.  

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Dr Fadi Issa who has been awarded a Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Career Development Fellowship

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Rebeca Arroyo Hornero who has been awarded two prizes in April 2018; the "750 Prize in the Sciences" from Balliol College. These prizes for graduate students were established through the generosity of a Balliol Old Member to commemorate the 750th anniversary of the College.  Rebeca also won the 1st prize at the Oxford Immunology Symposium.  She won both prizes for her poster "Co-stimulatory modulation of human regulatory T cells for enhanced immunotherapy".

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Prateek Katti, who won "Best Oral Presentation" at the NDS Awayday on 1st February 2018 for his presentation.

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Rebeca Arroyo Hornero who was awarded the first travel award from the Andrew Bushell Memorial Travel Fund - Rebeca will use the travel funds to attend the 5th European Congress of Immunology and has submitted an abstract entitled:  “Co-stimulatory modulation of human regulatory T cells for enhanced immunotherapy”

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Monica Dolton who won the "NDS Employee of the Year" award in February 2018.

TRIG are pleased to announce that we are part of the RESTORE community which has just been awarded with funding for the prepatory phase.

RESTORE is a Large scale Research Initiative, funded by the EU. It is designed to be a “place” where medicine, basic research, technology development and engineering meet, communicate and work together: to tackle grand interdisciplinary science and technology challenges and to find novel solutions.

To find out more about the initiative please go to: https://www.restore-h2020.eu/home

TRIG team members took part in the IF Oxford science and ideas festival recently, with an interactive story called  'The heroes and villains in transplantation - Can you sort them out?' which showed how an upcoming clinical trial, called The TWO Study, will sort 'good' protective cells from 'bad' cells that cause transplant rejection and how this might help save lives.

Pictured above are:  George Adigbli, Sabrina Wright, Dr Mathew Brook, Dr Joanna Hester and Cosmo Tullar.

Read the full story here: https://www.nds.ox.ac.uk/news/nds-at-if-oxford

Dr Andrew Bushell, a key member of the Wood Lab / TRIG passed away in December 2016 after a period of illness.

As a way to celebrate Andrew’s career and all of his contributions to the success of the group a travel fund has been set up to help provide travel bursaries for graduate students and early career researchers to attend meetings.    Andrew was passionate about educating and training young scientists and was very proud of the achievements of all of the students and fellows that have been members of the Wood Lab/TRIG over the years.

If you would like to contribute to the fund please follow the link below.

www.campaign.ox.ac.uk/bushell-memorial-travel

 If you would like any further information about the fund, please contact Monica Dolton:  monica.dolton@nds.ox.ac.uk

We offer many congratulations to Rebeca Arroyo Hornero and Jessica Padley who are the first two recipients of the Andrew Bushell Memorial Travel Fund Awards.