Dr Mario Abinun is a retired paediatric immunologist, currently holding honorary posts of Associate Lecturer, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University, and Emeritus Consultant, Great North Children’s Hospital, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
Dr Abinun graduated from the Medical School at Sarajevo University, trained in paediatrics at Mother and Child Health Institute (MCHI) in Belgrade where he earned his MSc and PhD in paediatric immunology. He completed a Visiting Fellowship in Paediatric Immunology in 1986 at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children and Institute for Child Health, London, UK. In 1990 he led the bone-marrow transplantation (BMT) team at MCHI to perform the first T cell depleted BMT for severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) in former Yugoslavia, with his wife Professor Desa Lilic providing crucial laboratory expertise. He was a PI for several clinical studies in children with primary immunodeficiencies (PID) and autoimmune/rheumatic disorders (AIRD) (results published in Lancet (1992) and Clin Immunol (2003)). Before moving to Newcastle upon Tyne, UK in 1992, he held posts of Head, Paediatric Immunology Department, MCHI and of Assistant Professor in Paediatrics, the Medical School, Belgrade University.
Based on his experience and expertise, Dr Abinun was approached in 1992 to join AJ Cant in Newcastle as a senior member of the team setting up and developing one of the two UK national ‘supra-regional’ centres for BMT in children with PID to be one of the leading in Europe, establishing training/teaching base and leading clinical research integrated within the National Health Service (NHS) centre of excellence as part of the international collaborative network. His expertise is in BMT for a variety of PIDs, severe AIRD, and multidisciplinary team (MDT) approach (combined clinics) for assessment of children presenting with presumed PIDs overlapping with inflammatory and/or rheumatological features. Dr Abinun’s clinical input was essential in characterisation of the underlying nature of several novel inborn errors of immunity (IEI) in collaboration with Newcastle based (D Lilic – spectrum of chronic mucocutaneous candidiasis) and world-renown research groups (J-L Casanova – immune dysregulatory PID, I Aksentijevich – autoinflammatory disorders, A Villa – infantile malignant osteopetrosis).
Dr Abinun represented former Yugoslavia at European Group for Primary Immunodeficiencies, EGID (1986-1992), and he served as ESID Board member and chaired the ESID/EBMT Inborn Errors Working Party (2004-08). In 2006 he was awarded a National Bronze award by the Department of Health (DoH) Advisory Committee on Clinical Excellence Awards (ACCEA).
Following retirement from clinical practice, Dr Abinun took on medico-legal work as an Expert Witness Institute (EWI) certified expert witness in the field of his expertise (paediatric immunology).
Publications:
Co-author in ~200 peer reviewed (PubMed) publications; contributor in 12 books/chapters incl. Textbook of Primary Immunodeficiency Diseases (2007), Oxford Textbook of Rheumatology (2013 & 2017), Textbook of Pediatric Rheumatology (2021 & 2025).
Selected publications:
BMT for PID and AIRD – Gennery AR et al Cytotherapy, 2001; Antoine C et al Lancet, 2003; Pasic S et al J Clin Immunol, 2003; Pasic S et al J Clin Immunol, 2014; De Kleer IM et al Ann Rheum Dis, 2004; Silva JMF et al Blood Adv, 2018
Novel IEIs – Frattini A et al Nat Genet, 2000; Doffinger R et al Nat Genet, 2001; Sobacchi C et al Nat Genet, 2007; Puel A et alJ Exp Med, 2010; Ng WF et al J Allergy Clin Immunol, 2010; Angulo I et al Science, 2013; Zhou Q et al N Engl J Med, 2014; Cuchet-Lourenco D et al Science, 2018