Fellow

Gavin Screaton is Professor of Medicine at Imperial College. He has made important contributions in two highly competitive fields of research. His major interest in is the control of lymphocyte survival by the fas family of death receptors and their ligands. He was first to identify two new members of these families, LARD and LIT. In addition he expressed the ligand protein TRAIL complexed to the death receptor DR5 and with Yvonne Jones determined the structure. This gives insight into how the trimeric partners interact and trigger the apoptosis cascade. He has followed up these discoveries with studies on how these molecules modulate T cell development and function.His second area of interest is in pre-mRNA splicing. This arose from his early work on the CD44 molecule which has multiple alternatively spliced forms. He has identified key members of the splicing factors involved in this fundamental process in gene expression. A new interest is Dengue virus infection. He has recently shown that inappropriate T cell responses, primed by a previous virus strain, may contribute to dengue hemorrhagic fever.