Dr Mahima Swamy

Dr. Mahima Swamy is a Wellcome Trust and Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow and Programme Leader in the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit, and an associate Principal Investigator of the division of Cell Signalling and Immunology. Her research aims to study the function and regulation of intraepithelial lymphocytes. These are a class of poorly characterised innate-like T cells that reside in the intestinal epithelium, and are central to controlling infection, stress or transformation of the gut epithelium. Understanding the roles of intraepithelial lymphocytes will lead to better understanding of diseases such as inflammatory bowel disorders, infections and cancer.

Selected Publications

• Brenes AJ*, Vandereyken M*, James OJ, Hukelmann JL, Spinelli L, Lamond AI, Swamy M (2021). “Tissue environment, not ontogeny, defines intestinal intraepithelial T lymphocytes”. eLife, 10, e70055.  (*Joint first authors) DOI: 10.7554/eLife.70055
• James OJ, Vandereyken M, Marchingo JM, Singh F, Bray SE, Wilson J, Love AG, Swamy M (2021). “IL-15 and PIM kinases direct the metabolic programming of intestinal intraepithelial lymphocytes” Nat Commun 12, 4290. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24473-2
• Vandereyken M, James OJ, Swamy M (2020). “Mechanisms of activation of intestinal intraepithelial lymphocytes.” Mucosal Immunology, 13:721–31. DOI: 10.1038/s41385-020-0294-6
• James OJ, Vandereyken M, and Swamy M (2020). Isolation, Characterization, and Culture of Intestinal Intraepithelial Lymphocytes. Methods Mol Biol 2121, 141–152. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-0716-0338-3_13
• Chen Y, Vandereyken M, Newton IP, Moraga I, Näthke IS†, Swamy M† (2019). “Loss of adenomatous polyposis coli function renders intestinal epithelial cells resistant to the cytokine IL-22.” PLoS Biol 17, e3000540. DOI:  10.1371/journal.pbio.3000540
• Swamy M, Pathak S, Grzes K, Damerow S, Sinclair LV, van Aalten D, Cantrell DA (2016). “Glucose and glutamine fuel protein O-GlcNAcylation to control T cell self-renewal and malignancy” Nat Immunol. 17(6):712–20. DOI: 10.1038/ni.3439