Anne O'Garra, FRS, is a distinguished British immunologist who made important discoveries on the mechanism of action of Interleukin 10. She is a fellow of the Royal Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the Academy of Medical Sciences.
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Since 2001 O'Garra has been the Head of the Division of Immunoregulation at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) in London.[1]
She received her bachelor's degree in microbiology and biochemistry at the University of London. At the NIMR, she earned her Ph.D. in microbiology, staying on there for a four-year post-doctorate in immunology. In 1987, O'Garra left England for Palo Alto, California, to work for the DNAX Research Institute, where by 2000 she had become a principal staff scientist in the department of immunobiology.[2]
O'Garra is distinguished for her seminal contributions to the understanding of the intricate network of cell-cell and cytokine interactions regulating the induction and suppression of cellular immune responses. Importantly she was the first to discover the immunosuppressive functions of Interleukin-10 (IL-10), which inhibits antigen presentation by dendritic cells and macrophages and reduces their production of proinflammatory cytokines. She also discovered that dendritic cells produce the interleukin essential for activation of T-cells (IL-12) and subsequent eradication of intracellular pathogens and that IL-10 regulates this production. [3]