WEHI Personalised Oncology Special Seminar hosted by Professor Marie-Liesse Labat

Dr Amanda Oliver

Team Head, Barrier Immunity Lab, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute

Epithelial cells as active regulators of mucosal immunity

Davis Auditorium

Join via TEAMS

Including Q&A session

Please note this presentation will not be recorded 

Dr Amanda Oliver is a Team Head at QIMR Berghofer, where she leads the Barrier Immunity Lab. She completed her PhD in tumour immunology at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in 2020, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Professor Sarah Teichmann’s lab, supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship. Her research focuses on mucosal immunity, with work published in Nature and Nature Genetics revealing epithelial-driven immune niches and unconventional roles for epithelial cells in regulating adaptive immunity. She established her lab in 2025, where her team combines single-cell and spatial genomics with patient-derived in vitro systems to uncover mechanisms driving inflammatory diseases of mucosal tissues.

Epithelial cells form the first line of defence at mucosal surfaces and communicate directly with immune cells to maintain tissue homeostasis. Yet, their roles in regulating human immunity remain incompletely understood. Building large-scale single-cell and spatial transcriptomic atlases of the lung and gastrointestinal tract, spanning millions of cells from hundreds of donors, my work has revealed previously unappreciated epithelial functions in health and disease. In the healthy airway, we identified a gland-associated immune niche (GAIN), where epithelial cells organise and support local adaptive immunity. In the inflamed intestine, we defined aberrant epithelial states in 30% of inflammatory bowel disease patients that sustain chronic inflammation. Across tissues, these analyses point to a broader paradigm in which epithelial cells actively modulate immune responses, including through unconventional MHCII-mediated interactions with CD4 T cells. Building on these insights, my laboratory aims to dissect epithelial-immune interactions to uncover new therapeutic opportunities in chronic inflammatory disease.

All welcome!