News

Archived news stories [2012 - 2018]

PhD student Alice and visiting fellow Nathalie attended the EASL International Liver Congress in Paris. Nathalie gave an inspiring talk entitled 'Rescuing HBV-specific T cell responses by modulating cholesterol metabolism'. Mala also gave a talk discussing novel HBV treatments.

The Maini lab was invited to present at the Division of Infection and Immunity in the Virtual Virology series. Alice, Mariana and Kerstin all presented their latest data, with Laura giving a short overview. We very much enjoyed sharing our latest work!

Congratulations also to associate member Upkar Gill on the successful completion of his PhD.

The lab had a very enjoyable trip to Brighton where we attended the annual BSI conference. Post-docs Laura, Leo and Kerstin all gave brilliant talks, with Mala also invited to speak in the Immunometabolism session. Congratulations also to Laura Pallett who won first place in the Bright Sparks session with her talk entitled 'Induction of tissue-resident T cell as sentinels for therapeutic vaccination'.

We were very pleased to host Xavier Forns from IDIBAPS Barcelona over the summer. We had lots of great discussion and are looking forward to collaborating in the future.

Congratulations also to Nick Easom on the successful completion of his PhD. Nick was a Wellcome Trust funded clinical fellow researching the role of NK cells in Hepatocellular Carcinoma.

Congratulations also to associate member Jyoti Hansi who completed her MD. 

We are also pleased to announce that Anna Jeffery-Smith has been co-awarded a Barts & The London Clinical Training Fellowship and BIA Research Fellowship, and will be joining the lab from January 2018.

We are pleased to announce that Senior Research Associate Anna Schurich has been awarded a lectureship at Kings College London. We wish her all the best for a very successful career in science.

Lab members attended the "March for Science" in recognition of the importance of scientific research.

Also, congratulations to post-doc Laura who joined the BSI forum as an early career representative.

The Maini lab participated in - and won - the "Lab Olympics", raising over £270 for Prostate Cancer UK.

Members from the lab also had fun participating in the "NO-Hep" campaign to mark World Hepatitis Day and highlight the burden of the disease worldwide.

We are extremely pleased to annouce that Mala has been elected to the presitgious Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences in reocgnition of her contribution to medical research.

Wei-Chen Huang successfully completed his PhD study, entitled "NKG2D-dependent cross talk between NK cells and CD4 T cells in chronic hepatitis B" in June 2016 and has been awarded a full degree.

We are excited to announce that our member, Nick Easom has been awarded the PhD colloquium talk 1st prize and won £300.

We had a delightful time in Freiburg, Germany when our Lab group joined with the Robert Thimme Group. All of us participated enthusiastically in scientific & social activities with our friends and collaborators the whole trip.

Congratulations to Wei-Chen Huang for being awarded a bursary grant of € 400 by the European Federation of Immunological Societies for his NK cell presentation at the 2015 Natural Killer Cell Symposium in Gottingen, Germany.

Twitter for Maini Group has now been officially established! Please follow our updates.

We are excited to see that our recent publication, Pallett et al. Nat. Med. 2015 was picked up by a number of news outlets, including a News and Views article by Vincenzo Barnaba included in the same Nature Medicine edition and a Highlight article in Nature Reviews Gastroenterology Hepatology.  

We are once again proud to announce that a former PhD student of ours, Dimitra Peppa, has recently been awarded an MRC Clinician Scientist Fellowship entitled "Natural killer cell regulation of anti-viral T cell responses in the pathogenesis of HIV infection". This will build on findings from her work with us and will run until 2019. 

We are pleased to announce that Mala has been awarded a three-year MRC Project Grant to take forward the findings of our recent Nature Medicine publication (Pallett et al, 2015). The grant: 'Metabolic regulation of hepatic immunopathology by myeloid-derived suppressor cells' will be a collaborative effort involving Patrick Kennedy, Kito Fusai, Brian Davidson, Massimo Pinzani, William Rosenberg, Marcus Dorner, Jane McKeating, Margret Ashcroft, and Doreen Cantrell. 

We are also pleased to announce that Upkar Gill has been awarded a Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Training Fellowship entitled 'Harnessing the immune response in chronic HBV infection to optimize current treatment'. This project will run from 2015 to 2017 as part of a long standing collaboration with Patrick Kennedy at Barts & The London. 

We are pleased to welcome a new associate lab member - Victoria Male. She has been awarded the Wellcome Trust Henry Dale Fellowship to investigate 'Natural killer cell subsets in the liver, their phenotype, function and role in obesity-induced liver disease'. Funding has been awarded until 2019. 

Successful completion of BSc dissertations, John-Paul Carter - "Genetically engineering T cells to withstand the liver environment in chronic hepatitis B infection"; Jia Ying Toh - "Regulatory and pathogenic CD4+ T cell subsets in chronic hepatitis B infection". They both received BSc 1st class degrees.  

Lab retreat:

We spent a stimulating 2 days in a cottage surrounded by beautiful Hampshire countryside, discussing our research findings and strategy together. In between we found time for swims, walks, meals, drinks and lots of laughs together.

We are proud to announce that our division has won the Athena Swan Silver Award.

Nick began his Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Training Fellowship to last until 2017.