Joanna Groom

Dr Groom’s research is focused on how cellular positioning and communication control immune responses. This interest was piqued during her PhD, at the Garvan Institute, investigating the cellular signalling critical to lupus autoimmunity. Her research revealed a novel mechanism of autoantibody production, which was pivotal in licensing the BAFF blocking antibody, Belimumab for lupus treatment. During her NHMRC CJ Martin postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard/Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr Groom found how chemokine regulation was not only critical for T cell positioning but also unintuitively for T cell priming. Dr Groom is an ARC Future Fellow and Laboratory Head in the Immunology Division at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. Her research continues to investigate the context-specific signals that drive immune cell migration and cell fate. Dr Groom combines in vivo and 3D imaging methods with transcriptional analysis to discover how cellular interactions lead to tailored protection against diverse pathogenic infections. Dr Groom’s current work has revealed a pathogen-specific tailoring of T follicular helper responses and how the CXCR3 chemokine system balances T cell fate decisions, inflammation and immunosuppression.