Judith Elizabeth Allen FRS FMedSci FRSE FRSB is a British scientist who is Professor of Immunobiology at the University of Manchester since 2016.She is an expert on macrophages activated during helminthiasis and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2023.
Allen earned her undergraduate degree at Bates College.She was a doctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley where her PhD investigated cysteine-rich proteins of Chlamydia trachomatis.
Allen spent several years in the biotechnology sector before joining Imperial College London as a postdoctoral researcher.In 1997, she was awarded a fellowship from the Medical Research Council and moved to the University of Edinburgh. She was made Professor of Immunobiology there in 2005.
Allen studies helminthiasis, a disease caused by helminth (parasitic worm) infection. The infection is associated with the induction of a type 2 immune response. Allen has identified macrophages with a specific type 2 expression profile, which are found both at the site of the infection and in injured tissue. The macrophage phenotype is influenced by the genotype of the host and the infected site. Allen discovered a relationship between the chitinase-like protein 3 YM1 and Interleukin 17, an inflammatory cytokine associated with autoimmune disease.
