It is our great pleasure to nominate Professor Muzlifah (Muzz) Haniffa for the BSDB Cheryll Tickle medal. Muzz is Professor of Dermatology and Immunology at Newcastle University and interim Head of the Cellular Genetics programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. She is a pioneer in single cell genomics and cell atlasing of human development, which is one of the most exciting frontiers in developmental biology today. She focuses on the immune system, addressing how this complex cellular system develops across the body and how it contributes to the development of other tissues. What makes her work unique is its breadth: she studies systems across multiple organs, and uses multiple developmental time to reconstruct dynamics.

Muzz’s discoveries in human prenatal immune development represent a game changer in developmental biology and immunology. This began with a ground-breaking study that defined the complete cellular and molecular processes underpinning human fetal liver haematopoiesis (Popescu Nature 2019), continued with the first ever characterisation of the human fetal bone marrow (Jardine Nature 2021), and culminated in her recent her recent characterisation of the multi-organ function of the human yolk sac in supporting haematopoiesis (Goh, Botting Science 2023). With this corpus of papers she has comprehensively decoded the developing immune system – a stunning achievement.

Her work has significant translational impacts. She discovered hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) vary in potency across gestation, pinpointing this change to the molecular level (Popescu Nature 2019). The higher potency and broader output of HSCs earlier in liver development is incredibly relevant for HSC engineering and transplantation. She characterised how intrinsic HSC potential is altered in Down syndrome, altering the bone marrow microenvironment and causing genome-wide changes in many cell types (Jardine Nature 2021). This was one of first (if not the first) developmental studies of a human tissue with chromosomal alterations at single cell resolution.

Muzz has leveraged her clinical background to understand the links between developmental biology and various diseases. She discovered macrophages and endothelial cells interact to form a vascular developmental programme in the fetus, but also in eczema and psoriasis (Reynolds, Science, 2021). This co-option of developmental programs in adult tissues presents a paradigm for many other diseases. Beyond developmental biology, she has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the immune responses in COVID-19 (e.g. Stephenson, Nature Medicine 2021), demonstrating her commitment to advancing human wellbeing.

In addition to her extraordinary scientific output, Muzz has shown fantastic leadership and advocacy within the developmental biology community. As part of the international Human Cell Atlas initiative, she co-leads the Human Developmental Cell Atlas. She leads the blood and immune system theme in the Human Developmental Biology Initiative from Wellcome, and is regularly approached for her commentary on leading-edge developmental biology (e.g. Haniffa, Maartens & Teichmann, Nature Methods 2023). She is Chair of the Wellcome Career Development Award interview panel, Chair of the Academy of Medical Sciences sectional committee (cell and developmental biology, immunology and microbiology, genetics), a Trustee of the Foulkes Foundation, and will be on the Governing Body of the Lister Institute as of summer 2024. She is also a strong proponent of positive research culture changes and widening participation within academia (see for instance Teichmann, Haniffa & Fisher, Nature Communications 2022), and values collaboration and open science. We believe Muzz would be an entirely fitting and inspirational choice for the 2024 Cheryll Tickle Medal.

• • Sarah Teichmann
  • Liz Robertson