Giovanna Lombardi is Professor of Human Transplant Immunology in the Division of Transplantation Immunology and Mucosal Biology, MRC Centre for Transplantation, at King’s College London (since 2005). From 1987 to 2005 she was based at the Department of Immunology at the Hammersmith Hospital and before that at the University of Rome, Italy.

Her research has focused on the mechanisms of transplant rejection and tolerance as well as on the phenotype and function of regulatory T cells (Tregs) in health and disease, both in the murine system and in man. Recently her laboratory has established a clinical protocol to expand Tregs in vitro. Tregs has been used in two clinical trials in renal transplant patients as part of a large EU cell therapy consortium and in liver transplant patients supported by the MRC. In parallel, her group has demonstrated that adoptive cell therapy using alloantigen-specific regulatory T cells can offer an advantage compared to polyclonal Tregs for preventing chronic allograft rejection. A GMP compatible cell sorter to generate highly pure Tregs is under validation and this approach will open the possibility of using alloantigen-specific Tregs for future clinical trials within the next few years.