When: November 12, 2025 at 14:30–15:30
Where: Säätiö lecture room, Medisiina D
Speaker: Professor Luke O’Neill, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Title: How Mitochondria Control Cytokines

The seminar is open to everyone. Coffee and tea is served before the seminar from 14:00 onwards.

About the speaker:

Luke O’Neill is Professor of Biochemistry in the School of Biochemistry and Immunology, Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. He is a world expert on innate immunity and inflammation. He is listed by Thompson Reuters/ Clarivates in the top 1% of immunologists in the world, based on citations per paper. Professor O’Neill is a co-founder of Sitryx, which aims to develop new medicines for inflammatory diseases. Another company he co-founded, Inflazome was acquired by Roche in 2020 and is carrying out trials in Parkinson’s Disease, Severe Asthma and Heart disease using new therapeutics based on his work.

He was awarded the Royal Dublin Society / Irish Times Boyle Medal for scientific excellence, the Royal Irish Academy Gold Medal for Life Sciences, the European Federation of Immunology Societies Medal, the Landsteiner Award from the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Science Foundation Ireland Science Communicator of the Year award 2020, for his media work during the COVID19 pandemic. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy, EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organisation) a Fellow of the Royal Society and holds Honorary Degrees from the Universities of Massachusetts and Bath.

Luke has a weekly science slot with Pat Kenny on Newstalk and a weekly column on science in the Sunday Independent.    He has published several books including  Humanology: A Scientist’s Guide to our Amazing Existence,  The Great Irish Science Book, Never Mind the B*ll*cks, Here’s the Science (which won the An Post prize for best popular non-fiction book). In 2021 he published Keep Calm and Trust the Science: A Remarkable Year in the Life of an Immunologist, which is his diary covering the COVID-19 pandemic.   In 2023 he published To Boldly Go Where No Book has Gone Before, with Penguin Random House. His books have been translated into 8 languages.

1. Carpenter S, O’Neill LAJ. From periphery to center stage: 50 years of advancements in innate immunity. Cell. 2024 Apr 25;187(9):2030-2051. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.03.036.
2. Murphy MP, O’Neill LAJ.A break in mitochondrial endosymbiosis as a basis for inflammatory diseases. Nature (2024) Feb;626(7998):271-279. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06866-z. Epub 2024 Feb 7.
3. Pålsson-McDermott EM, O’Neill LAJ Gang of 3: How the Krebs cycle-linked metabolites itaconate, succinate, and fumarate regulate macrophages and inflammation. Cell Metab. 2025 May 6;37(5):1049-1059. doi: 10.1016/j.cmet.2025.03.004