Tim Tree
Professor of Immune Regulation & Immunotherapy King's College London
Tim is a specialist in human immunology, with a focus on how the immune system contributes to type 1 diabetes (T1D). He studies the balance between harmful and protective immune responses, and how treatments can slow or prevent disease progression.
Tim studied Biochemistry and completed a PhD at Imperial College London, researching the immune response to river blindness. Since 1995, he has been based at King’s College London, where he is now Professor of Immune Regulation and Immunotherapy. He takes part in UK and international research efforts — including the UK T1D Research Consortium and the INNODIA, ENDENT1FI, and GPPAD networks — all working toward a shared goal: a world without type 1 diabetes.
Seminars
After 10 years, biomarkers of tolerance remain the field’s most persistent open question, and with several programs now advancing into later-stage trials, the pressure to resolve it is significantly higher. This session puts you in the room with the people wrestling with the same problem in their own program right now: to compare notes, stress test current approaches, and leave with sharper ideas to apply to your own biomarker strategy.
This session will:
- Examine why patient heterogeneity has made biomarkers so difficult to identify, to clarify why an unbiased broad search often loses signal in the noise, and understand why a more targeted approach may be needed
- Analyze candidate biomarkers already in use or under investigation, such as autoantibodies, cytokines, cell-free DNA, and TCR repertoire changes, to compare their relative strengths, limitations, and readiness
- Review how combining multiple biomarkers, and improving how quickly they can be read out, could strengthen confidence in a clinical endpoint to weigh this against the practical demands of trial timelines and investor expectations
- Deep profiling of autoreactive T-cells using multiomic single-cell profiling to support treatment efficacy, and demonstrate proof-of-concept, and allow for precise monitoring across clinical trials
- High-throughput analysis of autoreactive T-cells using multiparameter cytokine FLUOROSPOT assays, to enable broader screening of patient samples, and scalable monitoring of trial populations
