Summary
Lydia's research career has been centered around understanding mucosal immune responses in both health and disease/infection. In her current post, she is excited to share her love and passion for research with undergraduate students.
Under Professor Stella Knight at Imperial College and in collaboration with the BBSRC-QIB Gut Microbes and Health programme, she did postdoctoral research examining functions of dendritic cells and their interactions with the microbiota to identify novel mechanisms underlying inflammatory bowel diseases, Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis and colorectal cancer.
Previously, in Respiratory Medicine/NHLI at Imperial College, she studied the roles of both innate cytokines (type I interferons) and innate receptor pathways (TLRs, RLRs and DNGR1) in the immune response to respiratory viral infection under Cecilia Johansson as well as the function of regulatory T cells in respiratory syncytial viral infection and disease under Professor Peter Openshaw.
Lydia obtained her PhD in Pathology from the University of Oxford in 2010. She performed collaborative research in Professor Fiona Powrie's lab at Oxford and Dr. John O'Shea's lab at the National Insititutes of Health (NIH, USA) and studied the roles of STAT3 and STAT5 in intestinal immune regulation. She was awarded a Fellows Award for Research Excellence (FARE) Award from the NIH in 2009 for this work. She completed her B.A. in Biology with honors at Colby College, USA in 2005. She graduated Summa Cum Laude and is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.
Publications
Journals
Noble A, Durant L, Dilke SM, et al., 2022, Altered Mucosal Immune-Microbiota Interactions in Familial Adenomatous Polyposis, Clinical and Translational Gastroenterology, Vol:13
Noble A, Pring ET, Durant L, et al., 2022, Altered immunity to microbiota, B cell activation and depleted gamma delta/resident memory T cells in colorectal cancer, Cancer Immunology Immunotherapy, ISSN:0340-7004
Reddi D, Durant L, Bernardo D, et al., 2021, In vitro priming of human T cells by dendritic cells provides a screening tool for candidate vaccines for Burkholderia pseudomallei, Vaccines, Vol:9, ISSN:2076-393X, Pages:1-10
Durant L, Stentz R, Noble A, et al., 2020, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron-derived outer membrane vesicles promote regulatory dendritic cell responses in health but not in inflammatory bowel disease, Microbiome, Vol:8, ISSN:2049-2618
Conference
Dilke SM, Durant LR, Stentz R, et al., 2021, DIRECT MANIPULATION OF THE INTESTINAL MICROBIOME TO INFLUENCE POSTOPERATIVE OUTCOMES, OXFORD UNIV PRESS, ISSN:0007-1323