Events
Seminar: Killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptors and HLA class I ligands, Professor Peter Parham FRS, Departments of Structural Biology and Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University School of Medicine
Abstract: Natural killer (NK) cells are lymphocytes of innate immunity that also contribute to placental reproduction. Mice, humans and other placental mammals have NK cell receptors that recognize polymorphic determinants of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I. These systems of highly variable receptors and ligands evolve rapidly, with the consequence that the human system of killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptors and HLA-A, -B, -C ligands has counterparts only in apes and Old World monkeys. With some focus on unique aspects of the human system, the function, diversity and evolution of the interactions between KIR and MHC class I will be reviewed.
Biography: Peter Parham is Professor in the Departments of Structural Biology and Microbiology & Immunology at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
As an undergraduate Dr Parham studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, subsequently obtaining his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Harvard University with Professor Jack Strominger. Elected a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard, he spent a year working with Walter Bodmer in the Department of Genetics at Oxford University, before returning to Harvard to start his independent research program. Dr Parham joined the Stanford faculty in 1980.
Throughout his career Dr Parham’s research has focused on proteins of the human immune system that vary greatly between individuals and populations. These differences, the consequence of natural selection, not only modulate the immune response to infection and cancer, but also influence the success of reproduction and therapeutic transplantion of cells, tissues and organs.
Dr Parham has received scientific awards from the Leukemia Society of America, the American Society of Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics, the European Federation of Immunogenetics and the British Society of Immunology; in 2008 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society. Dr Parham has served on the Editorial Board of several major immunology Journals and as Editor-in Chief for Immunological Reviews.
He is also the author of an introductory text-book ‘The Immune System’ that is used worldwide in immunology courses for undergraduate and professional students.