Sebastian Johnston is Professor of Respiratory Medicine & Allergy at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, and Honorary Consultant Physician in Respiratory Medicine & Allergy at St Mary’s Hospital, Imperial Healthcare NHS Trust, London. He is Director of the MRC & Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma, a Principal Investigator in the Wellcome Trust Centre for Respiratory Infection at Imperial College London and is the Clinical Academic Training Lead for Respiratory Medicine at Imperial College & Imperial Healthcare NHS Trust. He is an NIHR Senior Investigator, he holds the only Asthma UK Clinical Professorship and is the only Adult Respiratory Researcher in Europe to hold a European Research Council Advanced Investigator Grant. He is past Chairman of the Infection Groups in both the European Respiratory Society and the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology and of the Asthma Section, European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. He is the Principal Investigator on the MRC/GSK Strategic Alliance – a ~£6M venture aiming discover novel mechanisms in asthma exacerbations. Notable discoveries that have emerged from his past work include establishing the viral aetiology of asthma exacerbations (BMJ x5, Lancet), demonstrating that asthmatics are more susceptible to rhinovirus infection than normal individuals (Lancet, PNAS), discovering novel mechanisms of susceptibility to virus infection in asthma (JEM, Nature Med and PNAS) and describing a novel and effective treatment approach for acute exacerbations of asthma (NEJM).

Respiratory Medicine