Leonie Taams studied Medical Biology at Utrecht University, the Netherlands during which time she identified Immunology as her specialist subject of choice. In 1999, she obtained a PhD in Immunology from Utrecht University with a thesis entitled “Anergic T cells as active regulators of the immune response”. She undertook postdoctoral studies at the Royal Free and University College Medical School in London. There, with Prof Arne Akbar, she isolated and characterised, as one of the first groups worldwide, human regulatory CD4+CD25+ T cells.
Leonie continued to translate her findings to human inflammatory disease, by studying the presence and function of these cells in rheumatoid arthritis, at the University Medical Centre Utrecht. In early 2003, she took up a Lecturer position at King’s College London, initially at the Waterloo campus. She was awarded a BBSRC New Investigator Grant in 2004, and moved to the Guy’s Campus in 2005 to join the then newly established Division of Immunology, Infection & Inflammatory Disease. She became Senior Lecturer in Immunology in 2007, Reader in Immunobiology in 2013, and Professor of Immune Regulation & Inflammation in 2015.
Leonie runs an active research group aimed at identifying cellular and molecular mechanisms that initiate, perpetuate and regulate inflammation in human health and disease, funded by BBSRC, MRC, Arthritis Research UK, EU IMI, NIHR BRC and several industrial collaborations. In addition, Leonie is the Director of the Centre for Inflammation Biology and Cancer Immunology (CIBCI, previously the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology of Inflammation) at King’s, since 2015. And since 2018, she is the Head of the newly established Department of Inflammation Biology, in the School of Immunology & Microbial Sciences.