Dr Caroline Weight

Division of Infection and Immunity
University College London

Caroline received her PhD from the Institute of Food Research and the University of East Anglia working on the infection mechanisms of Toxoplasma gondii in the small intestine. She undertook her first postdoctoral position at Emory University, Atlanta USA investigating tight junction protein signalling in the context of Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Following on, she translated her signalling work experience to T cell biology at Lund University in Sweden, under sponsorship from the Wenner Gren Foundation. Caroline has been a Research Associate with Rob Heyderman since 2015 where her research focuses on the control of colonisation of Streptococcus pneumoniae by the human nasopharyngeal epithelium.

Links to selected publications:

1) Weight CM, Jochems SP, Adler H, Ferreira DM, Brown JS, Heyderman RS. 2021. Insights into the effects of mucosal epithelial and innate immune dysfunction in older people on host interactions with Streptococcus pneumoniae. Front Cell Infect Microbiol 11:651474.

2) Jochems SP, de Ruiter K, Solórzano C, Voskamp A, ...., Weight CM, et al. 2019. Innate and adaptive nasal mucosal immune responses following experimental human pneumococcal colonization. J Clin Invest 129(10):4523-4538.

3) Weight CM, et al. 2019. Microinvasion by Streptococcus pneumoniae induces epithelial innate immunity during colonisation at the human mucosal surface. Nat Comm 10: 3060.