Christopher E. Rudd

Christopher Edward Rudd, PhD, DSc., FRCPath, FMedSci is a Canadian-born immunologist-biochemist credited with having had a major impact on the understanding of the intracellular signals that control T-cell immunity. Rudd was the first to discover that intracellular protein kinases can interact with surface receptors. He showed that the T-cell co-receptors CD4 (also the receptor for the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV-1) and CD8 on T-cells interact with protein-tyrosine kinase p56lck. His discovery provided a role for members of the proto-oncogene pp60src kinase family in normal cell signaling. Many receptors are now known to use intracellular kinases in the regulation of cell growth. The CD4- and CD8-p56lck complexes are also widely accepted as the initiators of T-cell activation leading to the recruitment and activation of a second tyrosine kinase ZAP-70 and other substrates. The complexes control T-cell responses to foreign pathogens, allogeneic transplants and cancer cells. He has also elucidated signaling mechanisms responsible for the regulation of the immune response by co-receptors CD28 and CTLA-4.

Born in Toronto, Canada, he was educated at Jesuit-run Brebeuf College School. He received his PhD and DSc from University College, London and has held faculty positions at Harvard Medical School and Imperial College London. He is the past recipient of awards including the Cancer Research Institute/Benjamin Jacobson Family Investigator Award (New York), Claudia Adams Barr Research Award (Boston) and has been a Scholar of the Leukemia Society of America and a Principal Research Fellow of the Wellcome Trust (UK). He is presently Professor of Molecular Immunology at the University of Cambridge.

References

• Rudd CE, Trevillyan JM, Wong LL, Dasgupta JD, Schlossman SF. The CD4 receptor is complexed to a T-cell specific tyrosine kinase (pp58) in detergent lysates from human T lymphocytes. Proc Nat'l Acad Sci USA. 1988; 85, 5190-94.
• Barber, EK, Dasgutpa JD, Schlossman SF, Trevillyan JM, Rudd CE. The CD4 and CD8 antigens are coupled to a protein-tyrosine kinase (p56lck) that phosphorylates the CD3 complex. Proc. Nat'l. Acad. Sci. USA, 1989; 86, 3277-81.
• Rudd CE. CD4, CD8 and the TcR/CD3 Complex: a Novel Class of Protein Tyrosine Kinase Receptor (1990) Immunology Today, 11, 400-406