Arne Akbar PhD

Dr. Arne Akbar is an Associate of the Institute of Healthy Ageing and a Professor of Immunology at UCL. He heads a research group focusing on human T-cell differentiation and longevity and whether end-stage differentiation can lead to the loss of immunity in ageing humans. Achievements include developing 2- and 3-colour flow-FISH which allows measuring telomere lengths in different cell populations using flow cytometry, and close collaboration with Celltech plc. resulted in the development of unique reagents, allowing dissection of the complex array of signalling molecules and their roles in CD8+ T cell subsets, specifically those close to end-stage differentiation. His group has developed and validated a new model for the study of a human memory T cell response in vivo. It is currently using this model to investigate the causes of defective secondary responses to antigen injection in the skin of older humans.