Mohamed Shamji

Biography

Dr Shamji completed his clinical scientist fellowship training in clinical immunology at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in London, United Kingdom (UK) in 2004. He then pursued his interest in translational research and completed PhD studies in allergy and clinical immunology at the National Heart & Lung Institute, Imperial College London, UK in 2010. He has recently established his research group (Immunomodulation and Tolerance group) within Allergy and Clinical Immunology at Imperial College lead by Professor Stephen Durham. In recognition of his research and academic achievements, he was recently awarded the Imperial College President’s Award for outstanding Early Career Researcher, 2015. Dr Shamji has a specific interest in immunological mechanisms of allergen specific immunotherapy (AIT). In particular T, B cell and immunoglobulin responses leading to induction of immunological tolerance and the investigation of novel surrogate/predictive biomarkers of clinical outcome following successful immunotherapy. He has several peer-reviewed publications (an average of 6 to 7 publications/year over the last 2 years) in high impact journals. His two recent publications in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology were selected as editor’s choice. He has also written 2 book chapters on mechanisms and biomarkers of AIT. His recent studies have shown that type 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s) are increased in allergic individuals following natural grass pollen exposure during the pollen season and AIT inhibited this increase in the actively treated group. This was a novel finding illustrating for the first time the effect of AIT on ILC2s. These findings are now being validated in a time-course sublingual immunotherapy. More recently, he has shown that AIT restores interleukin-(IL)-27 producing dendritic cells (DC) and IL-27+ DCs play an important role in driving Th2 to Th1 type response and induce IL-10+ regulatory T cells. Additionally, in a MRC/Imperial College funded pump priming grant, he showed that a novel subset of IL-35 producing T regulatory cells are induced following sublingual allergen immunotherapy and are important in tolerance induction.

Research Interest

Immunology