Research Theme
Immunology
Research Group
Department/Faculty Affiliations
Current Area of Research
Development and regeneration of the thymus
Publications
Fatima is a clinical immunologist and a postdoctoral research scientist in the Hollander Group.
She studied medicine with an intercalated BSc in immunobiology and pathology in Imperial College, graduating in 2008. In 2012, she began her speciality training in clinical immunology in the context of an Academic Clinical Fellowship and then an NIHR funded Academic Clinical Lectureship.
She undertook her DPhil in Professor Hollander’s Lab between 2015 and 2018, funded by the Wellcome Trust. During her doctorate she studied transcriptional and epigenetic mechanisms that underlie promiscuous gene expression in thymic epithelial cells, a process critical for negative selection and therefore T-cell central tolerance induction.
Since then, she has extended her interested to studying broader aspects of thymic stromal cell development, heterogeneity, function and regeneration in both mouse models and in humans. Given her clinical background she has a particular interest in inborn errors of thymic stromal cells.