John Trowsdale

John Trowsdale PhD FMedSci MAE FRSB is an Emeritus Professor of Immunology at Cambridge University. After postdoctoral work on bacterial genetics at the CNRS in Paris, and the Scripps Clinic in California, he joined Sir Walter Bodmer’s laboratory in Oxford, which then moved to Cancer Research UK (formerly ICRF) in London. In the early 1980’s Trowsdale was one of the first to clone HLA genes and to complete sequencing of the entire HLA region. In collaboration with Stephan Beck at the Sanger Centre he provided sequenced common HLA haplotypes, which were used as ‘gold-standard’ references. Trowsdale has made other contributions to the field of immunogenetics, in particular identifying components of antigen processing for HLA, such as TAP transporters and immunoproteasome in the MHC, and the tapasin-related TAPBPR. More recently the group developed methods for studying polymorphic receptors on Natural Killer cells.