Summary
BA Cambridge 1976
BM, BCh Oxford 1980
MRCP (UK) 1983
PhD 1987
FRC Path 1999
Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2003)
ScD Cambridge 2006
Fellow of the Royal Society 2019
During my medical training I carried out studies on lung function, genetic polymorphisms, endocrine function and demography in high altitude populations in Nepal. In my PhD I established a model of respiratory syncytial (RS) virus infection in the mouse, and studied the T lymphocyte response to RS virus first in the mouse and then in the human.
Since 1987 I have studied the virology and immunology of persistent virus infections, in particular infection with the human T-cell leukaemia virus (HTLV-I) - see https://doi.org/10.26320/SCIENTIA225
. Our aim is to produce a comprehensive, coherent, qualitative and quantitative understanding of the persistence of HTLV-I and the immune response to HTLV-I, and an explanation of why certain individuals infected with HTLV-I develop fatal or disabling diseases while the majority remain asymptomatic. We use a broad range of techniques in molecular and cellular immunology, viral and host genetics, cell biology, DNA expression microarrays, proteomics and mathematics.
Publications
Journals
Izaki M, Yasunaga J-I, Nosaka K, et al. , 2021, In vivo dynamics and adaptation of HTLV-1-infected clones under different clinical conditions., Plos Pathog, Vol:17
Laydon DJ, Sunkara V, Boelen L, et al. , 2020, The relative contributions of infectious and mitotic spread to HTLV-1 persistence, Plos Computational Biology, Vol:16, ISSN:1553-734X
Rowan AG, Dillon R, Witkover A, et al. , 2020, Evolution of retrovirus-infected premalignant T-cell clones prior to Adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma diagnosis, Blood, Vol:135, ISSN:0006-4971, Pages:2023-2032
Marcais A, Cook L, Witkover A, et al. , 2020, Arsenic trioxide (As2O3) as a maintenance therapy for adult T cell leukemia/lymphoma, Retrovirology, Vol:17, ISSN:1742-4690, Pages:1-5
Lewin A, Hamilton S, Witkover A, et al. , 2019, Free serum haemoglobin is associated with brain atrophy in secondary progressive multiple sclerosis [version 2; peer review: 3 approved], Wellcome Open Research, Vol:1, ISSN:2398-502X