Rosemary Boyton
Born
Rosemary Jane Boyton
Alma materUniversity of London
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
ThesisT cell receptor signalling in Th1 and th2 cytokine responses in autoimmunity (2000)
Websitewww.imperial.ac.uk/people/r.boyton

Rosemary Jane Boyton is a British immunologist who is Head of Lung Immunology and Adult Infectious Disease at Imperial College London.[1] She works on the molecular immunology of infectious, allergic and autoimmune inflammation. She holds an honorary consultant position at the Royal Brompton Hospital, where she specialises in lung infection.

Early life and education

Boyton trained in medicine at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and gained a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MB BS) degree. She served as a junior doctor in various London hospitals, including the Royal Brompton Hospital, Guy's Hospital and the Hammersmith Hospital.[2] After training in respiratory medicine, infectious diseases and general medicine, Boyton was awarded a Wellcome Trust research fellowship to complete a PhD at Imperial College London[3] where she studied the mechanisms that underpin T helper cell responses.[3][2]

Research and career

After earning her doctoral degree, Boyton completed her specialist training at St Mary's Hospital and the Royal Free Hospital. She was awarded a Medical Research Council fellowship to develop novel models of lung inflammation.[2] Boyton established the Imperial College London Lung Immunology Group, where she studies respiratory infection and asthma.[2][4] In allergic asthma, lung inflammation is caused by a CD4 T cell that attacks otherwise harmless allergens. This attack can trigger an immune reaction which damages bodily tissue.[5] Boyton has studied how the body responds to pollen, in an effort to improve treatment for people who suffer from hayfever.[5] She showed that it was peptide 26 in the pollen that is most regularly recognised by the immune system.[5] In 2016 she was awarded a Medical Research Council (MRC) grant to investigate correlates of immunity to Zika virus.[6][7]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Boyton studied the requirements for countries to move out of lockdown.[8] As of late April 2020, around one third of the world's population was under lockdown. Boyton explained that to begin to reopen countries, there should be investment in increased testing, immune status return-to-work permits and contact tracing.[8] She has claimed that countries that which reopen ignore the fact that outbreaks amongst low-risk individuals can still cause a pandemic. Boyton emphasised that there would be a need for more accurate and specific antibody tests, which could identify asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 sufferers who have recovered from the disease, and seroprevalence data. In the case of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, 90% of survivors had virus-neutralising antibodies, and around half had strong T-lymphocyte responses.[8] Boyton believes that policy should be guided by data and evidence rather than assumptions about herd immunity.[8] Her research has been funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).[9]

Selected publications

  • Boyton, R. J.; Altmann, D. M. (2007). "Natural killer cells, killer immunoglobulin-like receptors and human leucocyte antigen class I in disease". Clinical & Experimental Immunology. 149 (1): 1–8. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2249.2007.03424.x. ISSN 0009-9104. PMC 1942026. PMID 17521317.
  • Campbell, John D.; Buckland, Karen F.; McMillan, Sarah J.; Kearley, Jennifer; Oldfield, William L. G.; Stern, Lawrence J.; Grönlund, Hans; van Hage, Marianne; Reynolds, Catherine J.; Boyton, Rosemary J.; Cobbold, Stephen P. (2009). "Peptide immunotherapy in allergic asthma generates IL-10–dependent immunological tolerance associated with linked epitope suppression". Journal of Experimental Medicine. 206 (7): 1535–1547. doi:10.1084/jem.20082901. ISSN 0022-1007. PMC 2715096. PMID 19528258.
  • Boyton, Rosemary J.; Openshaw, Peter J. (2002). "Pulmonary defences to acute respiratory infection". British Medical Bulletin. 61 (1): 1–12. doi:10.1093/bmb/61.1.1. ISSN 0007-1420. PMID 11997295.
  • Boyton, Rosemary J (2005). "Infectious lung complications in patients with HIV/AIDS". Current Opinion in Internal Medicine. 4 (4): 400–404. doi:10.1097/01.mcp.0000156992.53246.f8. ISSN 1535-5942. PMID 15818180. S2CID 32685800.

References

  1. ↑ Rosemary Boyton publications indexed by Google Scholar
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Dr Rosemary Boyton". rbht.nhs.uk. Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  3. 1 2 Boyton, Rosemary Jane (2000). T cell receptor signalling in TH1 and TH2 cytokine responses in autoimmunity. london.ac.uk (PhD thesis). Imperial College London (University of London). OCLC 930634149. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.392347.
  4. ↑ Boyton, R. J.; Altmann, D. M. (2004). "Asthma: new developments in cytokine regulation". Clinical & Experimental Immunology. 136 (1): 13–14. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2249.2004.02452.x. ISSN 1365-2249. PMC 1809003. PMID 15030508.
  5. 1 2 3 "Peptide 26: It could be the key to you getting your summers back". asthma-allergy.ac.uk. Asthma UK Centre. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  6. ↑ "Disproportionate and devastating: Professor Danny Altmann on the Zika virus: Imperial News". imperial.ac.uk. Imperial College London. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  7. ↑ Guenot, Marianne (2016-06-01). "At the frontline: the fight to curb Zika before Rio 2016". isciencemag.co.uk. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Altmann, Daniel M.; Douek, Daniel C.; Boyton, Rosemary J. (2020). "What policy makers need to know about COVID-19 protective immunity". The Lancet. 395 (10236): 1527–1529. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30985-5. ISSN 0140-6736. PMC 7185915. PMID 32353328.
  9. ↑ "Bio". Retrieved 2020-04-30.
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