Professor Jon Austyn

Biography

I am currently Professor of Immunobiology in the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences at the University of Oxford. I also act as Director of Graduate Studies for all its research students and am Director of the taught MSc in Integrated Immunology.

Following my undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford, in 1977 I joined the laboratory of Professor Siamon Gordon as his first graduate student in the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, Oxford. After the award of DPhil (the Oxford PhD), I then worked from 1980 with the late Nobel laureate Professor Ralph Steinman, as his first postdoctoral fellow, at the Rockefeller University, New York.

In 1983 I returned to the University of Oxford as the Lecturer in Transplantation Immunology in the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences and was later appointed Reader in Immunobiology. In 1999-2000 I was Visiting Scholar to the Centenary Institute of Cancer Medicine and Cell Biology, Sydney, and in 2002 I was Visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong.

Since 2016, I have been a Visiting Scholar to The Beutler Institute, Xiamen University, P.R. China. In that inaugural year of the Institute, I took leave from the University of Oxford to enable me to spend two months teaching for the BI in Xiamen. I subsequently took partial retirement from the University of Oxford to devote myself to this initiative for the future, and in 2019 was appointed Academic Coordinator of the Beutler Institute.

Research

For more than three decades, the research of my laboratory focussed on the immunobiology of dendritic cells (DC). These are the cells, first identified as such by Ralph Steinman, which play pivotal roles in the triggering and regulation of many types of immune response. Our early work focussed on the role of DC in triggering transplant rejection, and we subsequently contributed to understanding how pathogens such as HIV and malaria modulate the function of these cells for their own benefit and survival. In later years we then collaborated with other colleagues and identified a novel family of molecules produced by ticks that can modulate DC responses and which might be developed as new therapeutics, and discovered a large class of crystalline, inorganic materials that may provide the foundations for new adjuvants the can be incorporated into ‘smart vaccines’.

Teaching career

Since joining the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences in 1983, I have designed and delivered a wide variety of courses in immunology to broad audiences ranging from research assistants to principal investigators, and from undergraduates to postgraduates, at the University of Oxford. In 2004 I, and my clinical colleague Professor Helen Chapel, established the MSc in Integrated Immunology which I now direct with Dr Ross Sadler, clinical lead in immunology at Oxford. In 2005 I was awarded a Postgraduate Diploma in Teaching and Learning with Distinction and have received several University and Medical Sciences Division teaching awards. This long and varied teaching experience underpins my current contributions to teaching for the Beutler Institute in Xiamen.