Professor Anton Van der Merwe
Professor of Molecular Immunology, Sir William Dunn School of Pathology
About
After qualifying in medicine and completing a PhD at the University of Cape Town, Professor Anton Van der Merwe moved to Oxford in 1991 to work at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology.
His research focuses on working out how white blood cells, such as T cells, recognise infected or cancerous cells. Recent advances in this area have resulted in revolutionary new treatments for cancer, such as checkpoint inhibitors and CAR T cells.
Professor Van der Merwe is also interested in the health risks of exposure to radioactivity, especially radioactivity associated with nuclear energy and nuclear waste.
Expertise
- Immunity
- Health effects or risks of radioactivity or radiation
- Immunotherapy of cancer
Selected publications
- Ligand-induced segregation from large cell-surface phosphatases is a critical step in γδ TCR triggering (2024)
- Ligand requirements for immunoreceptor triggering (2024)
- Inefficient exploitation of accessory receptors reduces the sensitivity of chimeric antigen receptors (2023)
- Effects of common mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 Spike RBD and its ligand, the human ACE2 receptor on binding affinity and kinetics (2021)
- The large ectodomains of CD45 and CD148 regulate their segregation from and inhibition of ligated T-cell receptor (2013)
- Non-catalytic tyrosine-phosphorylated receptors (2012)
- Dependence of T Cell Antigen Recognition on T Cell Receptor-Peptide MHC Confinement Time (2010)
- The kinetic-segregation model: TCR triggering and beyond (2006)
- T-cell receptor triggering is critically dependent on the dimensions of its peptide-MHC ligand (2005)
Languages
English