Anna Katharina Simon

Anna Katharina Simon is Professor of Molecular Immunology at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, University of Oxford. Her work has pioneered understanding of how autophagy shapes cellular development and function in the immune system. She was the first to ablate the autophagy pathway in the hematopoietic compartment showing autophagy maintains haematopoietic stem cells. Her work also shows that autophagy is required for a range of immune outputs and that an age-related decline in autophagy contributes to loss of immune function in the elderly. These findings open up new therapeutic avenues to manipulate immune responses, including in the management of age-related morbidities.