Alison Simmons

Professor Simmons trained in medicine at the Royal Free Hospital in London and obtained her PhD at the University of Oxford. She has led a highly interdisciplinary research group at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine since 2007.

Professor Simmons is an international leader in intestinal immune system research, defining the cellular constituents and molecular circuits underpinning intestinal development and barrier health. She has defined how intestinal stem cell and immune cell niches are remodelled at a molecular level in intestinal diseases opening avenues for orthogonal and regenerative medicine-based treatment approaches. She has published extensively including in leading journals such as Nature, Cell, Nature Medicine and Immunity. She has expertise in bridging basic and translational research commercialising a series of innovations and has spun out 2 companies based on her research.

She has won multiple awards including an NIHR Research Professorship, The Sir Jules Thorn Award for Biomedical Research, Wellcome Investigator Awards and a Harrington Scholar-Innovator Award. She is Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Royal College of Physicians.

Among a series of leadership roles, Professor Simmons has led the UKRI Translational Immune Discovery Unit (TIDU) since 2021. The TIDU positions internationally leading fundamental immunology research alongside applied human tissue immunology utilising highly interdisciplinary technological approaches to resolve key immune system functions and harness immunity for health. She is deputy Director of the Weatherall Institute in Oxford, a founding molecular medicine institute undertaking world leading research at the forefront of immunology, infection, blood disorders, stem cell and cancer biology, and rare diseases.

Professor Simmons’ research programme uses innovative multimodal, multiscale genomic and molecular approaches to elucidate intestinal barrier function. These approaches uncover hidden mechanisms by which intestinal immunity operates to maintain barrier integrity and nutrition, prevent microbial infection or drive inflammation.  The Simmons group also study the molecular basis of intestinal immune development and aging, elucidating the mechanisms by which chronic inflammation contributes to development of intestinal cancers and failure of tissue regeneration in complex inflammatory bowel disease. The group develop technical and translational innovations based on these studies often working across disciplinary boundaries.

The Simmons group is made up of diverse specialists spanning biological scientists, computational biologists, mathematicians, physicians and surgeons and collaborates closely with chemists and physicists across research spanning intestinal development, inflammation, pre-cancer, aging and microbial infection.

Find out more about our current research themes on the Simmons group webpage.

The Simmons group is supported by a diverse funding portfolio spanning UKRI (MRC), the Wellcome Trust, the National Institute for Health Research, Horizon 2020, the Sir Jules Thorn Charitable Trust, the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, the Gates Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the UK Research Delivery Network and others.