DrTabitha Turner-Stokes

I am a Clinician Scientist (Wellcome Early Career Award Fellow) in the Centre for Inflammatory Disease, Department of Immunology and Inflammation, and Honorary Consultant Nephrologist at the Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. My clinical and research interests are in immune-mediated kidney disease, including systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and vasculitis.

I completed my undergraduate medical training at the University of Cambridge before moving to London for my clinical training, graduating from University College London in 2008. During postgraduate medical training I developed research experience in immunology through an Academic Foundation Year position within the Centre for Rheumatology at UCL. Having developed a particular interest in immune-mediated kidney disease, I obtained an NIHR funded Academic Clinical Fellowship position to undertake specialist training in nephrology. I was awarded an MRC Clinician Research Training Fellowship to complete a PhD at Imperial College London, during which I developed a live imaging model to study immune cell recruitment in the kidney. This work highlighted the importance of monocyte-derived macrophages in driving kidney inflammation.

I subsequently undertook post-doctoral research training through an NIHR Academic Clinical Lectureship at Imperial College London and a Post-Doctoral Clinical Fellowship at the Francis Crick Institute, conducting mechanistic studies in human models to better understand monocyte/macrophage biology in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). I was recently awarded a Wellcome Early Career Award to elucidate the mechanisms of macrophage driven inflammation SLE and identify tractable targets for macrophage-directed therapy.