Rachel Anscombe

I completed an undergraduate degree in BSc Biology at the University of Nottingham and subsequently undertook a MSc in Integrated Immunology at the University of Oxford. Part of my master’s degree involved researching the role of CD161+ Regulatory T cells (Tregs) in inflammatory arthritis within the Bowness/Chen lab, where I then continued to work as a research assistant.

I am now a DPhil student in the Powrie lab, with my project focused on a subset of secondary lymphoid organ residing Tregs known as ‘central Tregs’. My aim is to characterise the roles that this population plays in immune homeostasis and in the breakdown of tolerance to the gut microbiota, seen in inflammatory bowel disease. I am using a model of traceable microbe-reactive transgenic T cells to follow this central Treg population in both health and disease.