David Adams

Professor David Adams MD, FRCP, FMedSci, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Head of College of Medical and Dental Sciences and Dean if Medicine, University of Birmingham.

He is Director of Birmingham Health Partners, a strategic alliance between the University, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and Birmingham Women's and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, bringing together clinical, scientific and academic excellence across an integrated medical and life sciences campus, and Director of the NIHR Birmingham Biomedical Research Centre.

Professor Adam's clinical interests are transplant hepatology and autoimmune liver disease. Laboratory research interests are focused on mechanisms of immune-mediated liver disease. After initial training in hepatology in Birmingham he continued his immunology training with Dr Stephen Shaw at the Experimental Immunology Branch of the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, USA before being appointed to the Chair of hepatology in Birmingham in 1997.He has a long-standing interest in understanding how leukocyte-endothelial interactions regulate the recruitment of effector cells into tissues and his group have defined molecular mechanisms used by hepatic endothelium to control the entry of leukocytes from the blood into the liver. They have recently begun to use this information to develop new therapy for liver disease by targeting pathways involved in the recruitment of damaging effector cells or by promoting the recruitment of therapeutic cells including dendritic cells, stem cells and regulatory T cells that may be used to manipulate immune responses in patients in vivo.