Mark Coles

Research Themes: Interdisciplinary & Translational immunology, Mathematical & Computational Immunology, Stromal Cells, Inflammatory Disease, Human Experimental Medicine

Professor Mark Coles graduated with a BSc (Honors and Distinction) in microbiology from Cornell University (NY, USA) in 1992.  He then went on to complete his PhD in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley with Prof. David Raulet.  His research focused on Natural Killer cell receptor expression and function on T lymphocytes.  He undertook postdoctoral training with Prof. Dimitris Kioussis at the National Institute of Medical Research, London, investigating mechanisms leading to lymph node and thymus formation and function.

In 2006 he moved as a lecturer to the Centre for Immunology and Infection at the University of York focusing on stromal immunology to identify stromal cell formation and function in human and murine lymph nodes and tertiary lymphoid tissue using fluorescent lineage reporters.  In 2007 he initiated an on-going collaboration with Prof. Jonathan Timmis in the Electronics Department to apply computational and mathematical modelling to understand immune function.  He founded and co-directed the York Computational Immunology Laboratory.  Through this work he has been a passionate advocate for novel 3Rs based approaches in immunology.  In 2016 he was promoted to Professor of Immunology with a joint appointment in the Department of Biology and Hull York Medical School.

In 2017 he moved from York to the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, NDORMS with an affiliated position in the Wolfson Centre of Mathematical Biology, Mathematics Institute were his groups use interdisciplinary approaches from spatial single cell biology to multi-scale computational modelling to identify and accelerate the development of therapies for immune mediated inflammatory disease.  He works closely with Prof. Christopher Buckley and Prof. Calliope Dendrou to support the Arthritis Therapy Acceleration Program and medicalisation of the Human Cell Atlas.  He works closely with Prof. Eamonn Gaffney in WCMB to coordinate the Oxford Mathematical Immunology Laboratory developing mathematical, computational and Quantitive Systems Pharmacololgy (QSP) models to accelerate translation of mechanisms into immune therapies in patients. 

From 2017 - 2024 he was the Director of Graduate studies in the Kennedy Institute, in 2025 he became the Lead for industrial strategy and Entrepreneurship in the Kennedy Institute, helping to accelerate translation of the world leading science in the Kennedy Institute into therapies that impact on patients lives.

He has a long interest in entrepreneurship to drive impact from his science, in 2014 he co-founded Simomics Ltd to develop in silico virtual disease laboratories to reduce and replace the need for pre-clinical animal models in therapeutic discovery and development and de-risk clinical trial design for immune mediated inflammatory disease, tumour immunotherapy and toxicology testing.  In 2016 he co-founded Lightox Ltd a phototherapy-based company developing new treatments for oral cancer and AMR bacterial infections.  In 2020 he co-founded Mestag Therapeutics - redirecting fibroblasts immune crosstalk to develop impactful therapies for patients.  Mestag is driving first-in-class treatments for cancer and inflammatory disease through unique understanding of fibroblast biology.