Dr Leon Smyth is a Group Leader and ARC Future Fellow in the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute studying how the nervous system and immune system interact at its border tissues (the meninges). Leon established his lab at the BDI in 2025 under the Immunity and Neuroscience Research Programs.

The immune system treats the central nervous system (CNS) fundamentally differently than other organs, resulting in tolerance and immunosuppression. This property is termed immune privilege. For decades, it was thought that this was simply because the CNS was isolated from the immune system. In the last decade we have found that the two are constantly interacting, not within the nervous tissue itself, but at its borders. The meninges, in particular, are emerging as an immunological organ that services the CNS. Leon's group is focused on how these neuroimmune interactions are governed by the stromal cells present in the meninges.

Leon completed his Ph.D. in Prof Mike Dragunow's lab at the University of Auckland (2018) studying the blood-brain barrier, and its interactions with the immune system. In 2018, he was awarded a Neurological Foundation of New Zealand Philip Wrightson Postdoctoral Fellowship to pursue this further in Prof Mark Hampton's lab at the University of Otago. In 2021, Leon moved to work in Prof Jonathan Kipnis' lab at Washington University in St Louis. Here, he discovered how immune cells in the skull bone marrow can sense and respond to changes occurring in the brain and identified key anatomical sites which act as bridges between the CNS and the peripheral immune system that are critical for neuroimmune communication.

Leon has 34 published reports (h-index 20, FWCI 4.7, >2000 cites), including in leading journals such as Nature, Cell, Nature Neuroscience, and Immunity.