Professor Rahul Roychoudhuri

Rahul studied Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge and Clinical Medicine at King’s College London. After completing Clinical Academic Foundation Training in London, Rahul undertook a Ph.D. in Dr Gary Nabel’s laboratory at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a postdoctoral fellowship at Dr Nicholas Restifo’s laboratory at the US National Cancer Institute (NCI). Rahul has made important contributions to our understanding of immune regulation and lymphocyte gene regulation. A major contribution of his early research was the discovery of mechanisms underlying differentiation of a powerfully suppressive subset of T cells called regulatory T (Treg) cells. He discovered the critical function of the transcription factor BACH2 in Treg lineage specification (Roychoudhuri et al., Nature 2013; Vahedi et al., Nature 2015), and in suppression of immune responses against solid tumours (Roychoudhuri et al., J Clin Invest 2016). This work led to discovery of a new monogenic disease caused by BACH2 insufficiency (Nat Immunol 2017; reviewed in Nat Rev Immunol 2017). The laboratory's work has also shown that Treg differentiation in peripheral tissues is sensitive to local oxygen concentrations resulting in permissivity of the lung to cancer metastasis (Clever, Roychoudhuri, et al., Cell 2016). 

Rahul's work has also advanced our understanding of mechanisms that regulate CD8+ T cell memory and function. He established a critical function of BACH2 as a suppressor of CD8+ T cell activation required for the quiescence and long-term survival of memory cells (Roychoudhuri et al., Nat Immunol, 2016), and AKT inhibition as a means of expanding memory CD8+ T cells for adoptive immunotherapy (Cancer Res 2015). The laboratory has contributed to studies demonstrating that high potassium levels within the interstitial environment of tumours restricts CD8+ T cell activation (Nature 2016; Science 2019). Rahul’s research group is focussed on the biology of two cell types with critical functions in inflammation and tumour immunity: CD4+ T cells, including Treg cells, and cytotoxic CD8+ T cells. In 2015 Rahul was jointly awarded a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship by the Wellcome Trust and The Royal Society. In 2017 Rahul was awarded a Lister Institute Research Prize. Rahul is a reviewer for a number of peer-reviewed scientific journals and grant agencies, and serves on the Editorial board of Immunology.

For a full list of publications see: http://roychoudhurilab.org/publications/