Adrian Hayday, a Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute,
has been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in
recognition of his work on epithelial immune cells.
Royal Society Fellowship is made up of the most eminent scientists,
engineers and technologists from or living and working in the UK
and the Commonwealth. Fellows are elected for life through a peer
review process on the basis of excellence in science. There are
approximately 1,600 Fellows and Foreign Members, including around
80 Nobel Laureates.
Dr Hayday said: "It's a great honour to be elected as a Fellow
of the Royal Society. I feel privileged to have pursued a career in
investigative biomedical research - discovering the new and,
ultimately, contributing to the understanding and treatment of
cancer. I am also extremely fortunate to have worked with very
talented colleagues and collaborators without whom our progress
would not have been possible"
Paul Nurse, Director of the Francis Crick Institute and former
President of the Royal Society, said: "This is a well-deserved
accolade for Adrian. He is one of the front runners in his field
and I'm sure all his colleagues, past and present, join me in
offering him congratulations on this significant achievement."
Adrian Hayday FRS is currently based at the Crick's Lincoln's
Inn Fields Laboratory. He joined the Cancer Research UK London
Research Institute (now part of the Francis Crick Institute) in
2009. In recent years, his group has developed a strong programme
in human immunology, including clinical trials applying gamma delta
T cells in immunotherapy.
Dr Hayday trained as a biochemist, undertook PhD studies in
tumour virology, and then pursued post-doctoral training at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he characterised
chromosome translocation breakpoints in human B cell lymphomas, and
contributed to the identification of the hitherto unanticipated
gamma delta T cell compartment by being the first to describe the T
cell receptor gamma chain genes.