Dr Carla Jones

Senior Staff Scientist

I am an immunologist interested in finding out how differences in our DNA perturb the immune system leading to common immune mediated diseases  such as inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis and asthma.

I originally came from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and after my PhD I moved to the UK to develop a project investigating the interaction of bone-marrow cells and the lung mucosa in the context of Asthma. During this time, I developed a great curiosity towards a subtype of immune cells, namely T cells. These cells are central for the immune response and dysregulation of their function have serious consequences for human health.

After a career break to raise my young family, I was granted a Janet Thornton return-to-science fellowship at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in 2018, and joined Dr Carl Anderson team to investigate how genetic variants associated with inflammatory bowel disease influence human T cell function.

I have recently taken a very exciting role as a Senior Staff Scientist to lead the experimental team in the Trynka group. In our lab, we use state-of-art CRISPR-Cas9 and single cell technologies to understand how genetic variants and disease-candidate genes modulate the immune system and as a consequence how do they contribute to disease progression of common and rare diseases.

Get in touch: cjb@sanger.ac.uk; follow me on twitter @carlajonesbio