May 9^th at 14:00
Virtual event

John Todd, University of Oxford
From genetics to disease mechanisms to clinical trials in type 1 diabetes

Host: Riitta Lahesmaa (rilahes@utu.fi )

Registration latest May 8^th  at  https://link.webropolsurveys.com/S/9FE7447C1A28E71F

Immunology seminar series is jointly organised by the Finnish Society for Immunology, InFLAMES Flagship and Turku Bioscience. For further information contact Anne Lahdenperä (ankahy@utu.fi) or Riitta Lahesmaa (rilahes@utu.fi), University of Turku.

John Todd FRS, FMedSci, FRCP Hons, PhD is Professor of Precision Medicine at the University of Oxford, Director of the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics and of the JDRF/Wellcome Diabetes and Inflammation Laboratory (DIL), and an Emeritus Senior Investigator of the National Institute for Health Research. Previously, Todd was Professor of Human Genetics and a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, and until 2016, Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of Cambridge. His PhD was in Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University.  Todd researches type 1 diabetes (T1D) genetics and disease mechanisms with the goal of delivering clinical interventions. Todd helped pioneer genome-wide genetic studies in common diseases. He then went on to study the associations between disease-associated genetic variants and phenotypes in T1D by founding and deploying the Cambridge BioResource. In the latest phase of his research, to translate basic genetic and immunological knowledge to treatment and prevention, the DIL is testing the efficacy of low doses of interleukin-2 in newly-diagnosed children with T1D to preserve the remaining pancreatic islet beta-cell insulin production and investigating the role of the microbiome in T1D.

Selected publications

Jia-Yuan Zhang, …, John A. Todd, Ricardo C. Ferreira. Low-dose IL-2 reduces IL-21+ T cells and induces a long-lived anti-inflammatory gene expression signature inversely modulated in COVID-19 patients. medRxiv, 2023. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.04.05.22273167

Arcadio Rubio García, Athina Paterou, …, Nicola Ternette, Maki Nakayama, John A. Todd, Marcin L. Pekalski. HLA-DQβ57, anti-insulin T cells and insulin mimicry in autoimmune diabetes. medRxiv, 2023. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.05.11.22274678

Zhang JY, Hamey F, Trzupek D, …, Todd JA, Ferreira RC. Low-dose IL-2 reduces IL-21+ T cell frequency and induces anti-inflammatory gene expression in type 1 diabetes. Nat Commun. 13(1):7324, 2022. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-34162-3

Richardson TG, Crouch DJM, …, Todd JA, Davey Smith G. Childhood body size directly increases type 1 diabetes risk based on a lifecourse Mendelian randomization approach. Nat Commun. 13(1):2337, 2022. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-29932-y

Warncke K, Weiss A, Achenbach P, von dem Berge T, …, Szypowska A, Todd JA, Bonifacio E, Ziegler AG; GPPAD and POInT Study Groups. Elevations in blood glucose before and after the appearance of islet autoantibodies in children. J Clin Invest. 132(20):e162123, 2022. doi: 10.1172/JCI162123