After his PhD McMichael completed his postdoctoral research supervised by Hugh McDevitt at Stanford University.[4] In 1977 he returned to the UK to study the T cell response to HIV infection. His research group have created two HIV vaccines which were tested in phase I clinical trials.[5] McMichael became director of the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine in 2000, and remained so until 2012.[6] He founded the MRC Human Immunology Unit in 1998 as honorary director until 2010.
McMichael has supervised over 55 DPhil students over his career,[5] many of whom have gone on to become leading immunologists themselves:
Douglas F. Nixon, Professor of Immunology in Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College.[7][8]
Malegapuru Makgoba, Professor of Immunology and former Vice-Chancellor & Principal of the University of KwaZulu-Natal.[9]
Matilu Mwau Professor and Executive Director of the Consortium for National Health Research[10][11]
Paul Bowness, Professor of Experimental Rheymatology[12][13]
Awen Gallimore, Professor of Cancer Immunology[14][15][16]
Paul Klenerman, Sidney Truelove Professor of Gastroenterology[17][18][19]
Dan Barouch, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Harvard Medical School[20][21]
Sophie Hambleton, Professor of Paediatrics & Immunology[22][23][24]
Suranjith Seneviratne, Professor, Director of the Centre for Mast Cell Disorders and the President of the UK-Sri Lanka Immunology Foundation.[25][26][27]
Ling-Pei Ho, Professor of Respiratory Immunology[28][29]
In addition McMichael supervised postdoctoral researchers, including Tomáš Hanke (Professor of Vaccine Immunology), and Sarah Rowland-Jones (Professor of Immunology).[30][31][32][33]
In 1968 McMichael married Kathryn 'Kate' Elizabeth Cross, they have two sons and one daughter.[2] McMichael enjoys walking and skiing at his house in La Salle les Alpes, France.[2]
McMichael, A. J.; Gotch, F. M.; Noble, G. R.; Beare, P. A. (7 July 1983). "Cytotoxic T-cell immunity to influenza". The New England Journal of Medicine. 309 (1): 13–17. doi:10.1056/NEJM198307073090103. ISSN0028-4793. PMID6602294.
Townsend, A. R.; Rothbard, J.; Gotch, F. M.; Bahadur, G.; Wraith, D.; McMichael, A. J. (28 March 1986). "The epitopes of influenza nucleoprotein recognized by cytotoxic T lymphocytes can be defined with short synthetic peptides". Cell. 44 (6): 959–968. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(86)90019-x. ISSN0092-8674. PMID2420472. S2CID23606100.
Braud, Veronique M.; Allan, David S. J.; O'Callaghan, Christopher A.; Söderström, Kalle; D'Andrea, Annalisa; Ogg, Graham S.; Lazetic, Sasha; Young, Neil T.; Bell, John I. (1998). "HLA-E binds to natural killer cell receptors CD94/NKG2A, B and C". Nature. 391 (6669): 795–799. Bibcode:1998Natur.391..795B. doi:10.1038/35869. ISSN1476-4687. PMID9486650. S2CID4379457.
Natural killer cells, also known as NK cells or large granular lymphocytes (LGL), are a type of cytotoxic lymphocyte critical to the innate immune system. They belong to the rapidly expanding family of known innate lymphoid cells (ILC) and represent 5–20% of all circulating lymphocytes in humans. The role of NK cells is analogous to that of cytotoxic T cells in the vertebrate adaptive immune response. NK cells provide rapid responses to virus-infected cell and other intracellular pathogens acting at around 3 days after infection, and respond to tumor formation. Most immune cells detect the antigen presented on major histocompatibility complex (MHC) on infected cell surfaces, but NK cells can recognize and kill stressed cells in the absence of antibodies and MHC, allowing for a much faster immune reaction. They were named "natural killers" because of the notion that they do not require activation to kill cells that are missing "self" markers of MHC class I. This role is especially important because harmful cells that are missing MHC I markers cannot be detected and destroyed by other immune cells, such as T lymphocyte cells.
A tetramer assay is a procedure that uses tetrameric proteins to detect and quantify T cells that are specific for a given antigen within a blood sample. The tetramers used in the assay are made up of four major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules, which are found on the surface of most cells in the body. MHC molecules present peptides to T-cells as a way to communicate the presence of viruses, bacteria, cancerous mutations, or other antigens in a cell. If a T-cell's receptor matches the peptide being presented by an MHC molecule, an immune response is triggered. Thus, MHC tetramers that are bioengineered to present a specific peptide can be used to find T-cells with receptors that match that peptide. The tetramers are labeled with a fluorophore, allowing tetramer-bound T-cells to be analyzed with flow cytometry. Quantification and sorting of T-cells by flow cytometry enables researchers to investigate immune response to viral infection and vaccine administration as well as functionality of antigen-specific T-cells. Generally, if a person's immune system has encountered a pathogen, the individual will possess T cells with specificity toward some peptide on that pathogen. Hence, if a tetramer stain specific for a pathogenic peptide results in a positive signal, this may indicate that the person's immune system has encountered and built a response to that pathogen.
HLA class II histocompatibility antigen gamma chain also known as HLA-DR antigens-associated invariant chain or CD74, is a protein that in humans is encoded by the CD74 gene. The invariant chain is a polypeptide which plays a critical role in antigen presentation. It is involved in the formation and transport of MHC class II peptide complexes for the generation of CD4+ T cell responses. The cell surface form of the invariant chain is known as CD74. CD74 is a cell surface receptor for the cytokine macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF).
Brigitte Alice Askonas was a British immunologist and a visiting professor at Imperial College London from 1995.
Dame Fiona Magaret Powrie is currently the head of the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at the University of Oxford. Formerly she was the inaugural Sidney Truelove Professor of Gastroenterology at the University of Oxford. She is also head of the Experimental Medicine Division of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine.
M. Juliana “Julie” McElrath is a senior vice president and director of the vaccine and infection disease division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the principal investigator of the HIV Vaccine Trials Network Laboratory Center in Seattle, Washington. She is also a professor at the University of Washington.
Sir Adrian Vivian Sinton Hill, is an Irish vaccinologist, Director of the Jenner Institute and Lakshmi Mittal and Family Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Oxford, an honorary Consultant Physician in Infectious Diseases, and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. Hill is a leader in the field of malaria vaccine development and was a co-leader of the research team which produced the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, along with Professor Sarah Gilbert of the Jenner Institute and Professor Andrew Pollard of the Oxford Vaccine Group.
Mark Morris Davis is an American immunologist. He is the director of and Avery Family Professor of Immunology at the Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection at Stanford University.
(Edith) Yvonne JonesFLSW is director of the Cancer Research UK Receptor Structure Research Group at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. She is widely known for her research on the molecular biology of cell surface receptors and signalling complexes.
Suranjith Seneviratne is a doctor from Sri Lanka who practices in allergology and immunology.
Helen Irene McShane is a British infectious disease physician and a professor of vaccinology, in the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, where she has led the tuberculosis vaccine research group since 2001. She is senior research fellow at Harris Manchester College, Oxford.
Charles Bangham holds the Chair in Immunology at Imperial College London.
Dame Sarah Catherine Gilbert FRS is an English vaccinologist who is a Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Oxford and co-founder of Vaccitech. She specialises in the development of vaccines against influenza and emerging viral pathogens. She led the development and testing of the universal flu vaccine, which underwent clinical trials in 2011.
Marylyn Martina Addo is a German infectiologist who is a Professor and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) Head of Infectious Disease at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf. Addo has developed and tested vaccinations that protect people from Ebola virus disease and the MERS coronavirus EMC/2012. She is currently developing a viral vector based COVID-19 vaccine.
Tao Dong is a Chinese-British immunologist who is Professor of Immunology at Oxford University. Her work focuses on the study of T-cells which respond to viral infections and viral associated cancer. She is a founding director for both the CAMS-Oxford joint International Center for Transnational Immunology and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Oxford Institute (COI).
Sir Andrew John Pollard is the Ashall Professor of Infection & Immunity at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. He is an Honorary Consultant Paediatrician at John Radcliffe Hospital and the Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group. He is the Chief Investigator on the University of Oxford COVID-19 Vaccine trials and has led research on vaccines for many life-threatening infectious diseases including typhoid fever, Neisseria meningitidis, Haemophilus influenzae type b, streptococcus pneumoniae, pertussis, influenza, rabies, and Ebola.
The MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford is a research institute located at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. Founded in 1989 by Sir David Weatherall, the institute focuses on furthering our understanding of clinical medicine at a molecular level. It was one of the first institutes of its kind in the world to be dedicated to research in this area.
A viral vector vaccine is a vaccine that uses a viral vector to deliver genetic material (DNA) that can be transcribed by the recipient's host cells as mRNA coding for a desired protein, or antigen, to elicit an immune response. As of April 2021, six viral vector vaccines, four COVID-19 vaccines and two Ebola vaccines, have been authorized for use in humans.
Eleanor Barnes is a British physician at the John Radcliffe Hospital and a Professor of Hepatology and Experimental Medicine at the University of Oxford. She has studied hepatitis C and the development of the development of HCV vaccines. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and serves as the lead for hepatology at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Clinical Research Network.
Sarah Rowland-Jones is a British physician who is a Professor of Immunology at the University of Oxford. She works on immune responses to HIV infection. She has focussed her research on problems caused by HIV in Africa, with a hope to create a successful HIV vaccine. She is the former president of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
↑ McMichael, A. J. (1975). The clonal expression of antibody-forming cells (Ph.D. thesis). England: Council for National Academic Awards (United Kingdom). ProQuest301272025.
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