Born and brought up in Jamaica, Ms Coote graduated with a bachelor’s degree in immunology from the University of East London. She soon began working at the Institute of Child Health at Great Ormond Street Hospital under Professor Roland Lavinsky, a world leader in the field of immunodeficiency diseases, who carried out the first successful bone marrow transplants in Britain at the hospital.

She spent five years at the hospital, helping to refine pioneering methods of matching and transplanting bone marrow for sick children. Her dedication helped make the process replicable, lessening the need for a research scientist, so she moved on to St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington. There she worked on research aimed at boosting the immune systems of babies born with HIV/AIDS. Among her patients was the first baby who had contracted AIDS in the womb. The efforts of researchers like Ms Coote are one of the key reasons why mother-to-child transmission of HIV has now been almost totally eliminated.

After three years at St Mary’s, she gave up her laboratory career to look after her growing family. She and her husband, Mark Stephens, a distinguished lawyer and himself both a UEL alumnus and the holder of an honorary degree from the University, had three daughters, Eleanor, Olivia and Sheridan.

Returning to work when her children grew up, Ms Coote took up a post with the research foundation, Saving Faces. The foundation specialises in facial reconstruction after cancer, trauma or birth defects, with Ms Coote given the difficult task of selecting which patients would be treated. Diagnosed with cancer, she died in 2020.