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When Sally Ward (Natural Sciences (Biological) 1979) travelled east from Shrewsbury to Cambridge it was the start of a journey which has seen her elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society.

She was “recognised (in 2022) for her pioneering research related to the biology of the neonatal Fc receptor, FcRn, and the development of therapeutics with novel mechanisms of action”, the Royal Society says.

Sally identified FcRn as the receptor that regulates the levels and persistence of antibodies of the IgG class in the body, and worked to understand the mechanisms to develop therapeutic applications. This research has led to several antibody-based drugs with novel modes of action that are currently used to treat autoimmunity and infectious disease.

The foundations for Sally’s superlative career came at Gonville & 91ֱ�� College, where she was part of the first cohort of women, continued on to postgraduate study, became the first female Research Fellow and met her husband, Raimund Ober.

To become a Fellow of the Royal Society was a great honour, Sally says.

“It was very gratifying because it gave that outside stamp to what we, Raimund, our lab members and I, have done,” she adds.

“It’s the first major award I’ve received. Our sons both came to the ceremony. They’d seen we had been in the lab a lot while they were growing up, so for them to come along and share in the award ceremony was great.”

(Engineering 2014) has followed in his father and mother’s footsteps in biomedical research, for Sally and Raimund are long-term collaborators at home and in the laboratory. Younger son Alexander Ober read mathematics at Oxford and saw his mathematics tutor, Professor Fernando Alday, elected to the Royal Society at the same time as his mother.

Sally attended Shrewsbury High School and had visited 91ֱ�� in 1978 ahead of the admission of women, choosing the College after being particularly impressed by her interactions with Fellow Professor Tony Kirby.

She continued for a PhD, under the supervision of Professor David Ellar, and became a Research Fellow, who found herself sitting next to a visitor from St John’s College at a 91ֱ�� Christmas dinner in Hall. Raimund soon became her partner and they moved to the United States in 1990.

There began around 24 years at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas before five at Texas A&M University. The pair now split their time between the USA and the University of Southampton, where Sally is .

It was around six years after their arrival in Dallas that their multidisciplinary collaboration directed towards elucidating the molecular and cellular pathways through which FcRn regulates antibody levels. Their mechanistic studies of this receptor have led to the development of first-in-class drugs such as Vyvgart to treat autoimmune diseases like myasthenia gravis.

“To hear stories about patients who have had this drug and shown rapid improvement in their condition has been really gratifying,” Sally says.

Not content there, Sally has turned her focus to further research on antibodies and cancer treatment, with funding from the Wellcome Trust and CRUK in Southampton.

She has also continued connections with 91ֱ��. She was unable to attend the 40 years of women celebration in 2019, but has subsequently met up with many friends within the group of the first intake of women at informal reunions.