Dr Harindra Amarasinghe

Dysregulation of the immune response causes common and important diseases ranging from auto-inflammatory states to sepsis. Improved understanding of the molecular landscape that regulates immune-metabolic response changes, and how it varies between individuals will provide novel insights into the pathophysiology of the disease. Furthermore, it will allow better stratification of patients as well as advance precision medicine in a more targeted and effective manner.

My research aims to define and characterise the functional alleles, gene regulatory mechanisms, and therapeutic options required to resolve the dysregulation of innate and adaptive immune responses in disease settings.

Background

I graduated from the University of Peradeniya with a First-class honours degree in Zoology. I was then involved in academic teaching for four years as a university lecturer, during which I received the Open PhD Scholarship for Life Sciences from the University of Leicester and completed my PhD on epigenetics and the evolution of genomic imprinting in a social insect system at the Department of Genetics and Genome Biology (University of Leicester). I then joined the School of Cancer Sciences of the University of Southampton as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow where I investigated the clinical utility of genetic and epigenetic biomarkers in treating Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia patients entered into first-line chemotherapy and chemo-immunotherapy in UK CLL clinical trials.

I joined the Knight group in 2018 and my project explored the role functional genomics play in extreme immunity, with a particular emphasis on immune tolerance, and targeted identification of therapeutic options using a combination of multi-omic approaches.

Currently, I work as a senior scientist in the Knight group on a collaborative project led by Julian Knight and Marian Knight on advancing personalised maternal healthcare using genomic-based approaches alongside epidemiological studies.