Lydia Lynch

Lydia Lynch, immunologist, studies the effects of obesity and diet on immune cell functions. She was named a 2009 Fellow of the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award, and she directs the Lynch Lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Biography

Lydia Lynch received her B.Sc. degree in Cell Biology and Genetics from University College Dublin, Ireland. She went on to earn her PhD in Immunology in 2008 from the same university after working in the lab of Cliona O’Farrelly in St. Vincent’s University Hospital.

She worked with Donal O’Shea at St. Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin for her post-doctoral studies and helped establish the Immunology and Obesity Lab, with the goal of coordinating international, collaborative, translational research in obesity and its complications.

For that work, she received a Newman Fellowship, followed by a L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Fellowship in 2009, and she moved to Harvard Medical School in Boston to study iNKT cells in adipose tissue in the lab of Mark Exley. In 2009, Lydia received an International Marie Curie Fellowship to continue her postdoctoral studies in immunometabolism, in the labs of Michael Brenner and Ulrich von Andrian at Harvard.

In 2013, she became a member of the junior faculty at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and in 2014, Lydia started her own independent lab which was made possible by a joint appointment between the Division of Endocrinology and the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

In Lynch's lab, she directs researchers who study the role of the immune system in the regulation of metabolism and body weight. They pay particular attention to the local immune system in adipose tissue in both mice and humans.

In 2022, Lynch was the recipient of the John R. Kettman Award for Excellence in Cytokine and Interferon Research, which was given by the International Cytokine and Interferon Society, saying "Lynch’s research has the potential to provide insight into the impact of obesity and diet on cancer immunotherapy, as well as the mechanisms underlying the increased risk of immune-related disorders associated with obesity."

Selected publications

• Lynch, Lydia, Donal O'Shea, Desmond C. Winter, Justin Geoghegan, Derek G. Doherty, and Cliona O'Farrelly. "Invariant NKT cells and CD1d+ cells amass in human omentum and are depleted in patients with cancer and obesity." European journal of immunology 39, no. 7 (2009): 1893-1901.
• Lynch, Lydia, Xavier Michelet, Sai Zhang, Patrick J. Brennan, Ashley Moseman, Chantel Lester, Gurdyal Besra et al. "Regulatory i NKT cells lack expression of the transcription factor PLZF and control the homeostasis of Treg cells and macrophages in adipose tissue." Nature immunology 16, no. 1 (2015): 85-95.
• Lynch, Lydia, Andrew E. Hogan, Danielle Duquette, Chantel Lester, Alexander Banks, Katherine LeClair, David E. Cohen et al. "iNKT cells induce FGF21 for thermogenesis and are required for maximal weight loss in GLP1 therapy." Cell metabolism 24, no. 3 (2016): 510-519.