Rocking the world of innate immunity: an interview with Luke O'Neill

Abstract

Luke O'Neill is professor of biochemistry in the School of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity College Dublin, and his main research focus is innate immunity and its key output, inflammation. His work has explored the key sensors and mediators of infection, including the Toll-like receptors, inflammasomes and cytokines in the interleukin-1 (IL-1) family. Luke received the Royal Irish Academy Gold Medal for Life Sciences in 2012 and the European Federation of Immunology Societies Medal in 2014. He was elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) in 2005 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2016. In this interview, Luke talks about the necessary collaboration between immunologists and cancer scientists, inflammaging, and his rock-star alter-ego as frontman of The Metabollix.