Fellow

John Gribben leads the Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre at Barts and the London. While at Harvard Medical School he demonstrated the clinical significance of detection of minimal residual disease in B cell lymphomas and leukaemia. He then showed that immunotherapy could eradicate PCR detectable cancer cells leading to improved survival. Subsequently he has focused on ways to enhance immunogenicity of cancer cells in order to induce anti-tumour immunity in both autologous and allogeneic settings. He cloned and characterized the immunological function of CD86 and examined the potential role of CD80 and CD86 in the induction of anergy. Based upon his pre-clinical and clinical models, he was the first to induce anergy ex-vivo to allow haploidentical allogeneic stem cell transplantation, and first to report on the negative regulatory role of CTLA4. Since returning to the UK he has taken an important role in the North East London Cancer Network and opened an Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre at Barts as well as deveolping his own research programme.